Platform Development Lead

We are seeking a Platform Development Lead to provide technical leadership across our platform engineering function while also owning production reliability and quality across our SaaS product.

This role leads a cross-functional platform team consisting of DevOps specialists, senior data developers/architects, and QA automation engineers. You will also take ownership of end-to-end production health, ensuring stability, performance, and continuous improvement of our platform.

You will act as the key bridge between Engineering, Product, and Customer Success, driving improvements in reliability, reducing production issues, and improving overall platform quality.

Key Responsibilities

Platform Team Leadership & Management

• Lead and develop a cross-functional platform team (DevOps, Data Engineering/Architecture, QA Automation)
• Set clear objectives, conduct regular 1:1s, and support professional development
• Build a high-trust, collaborative team culture aligned with enabling team principles
• Manage team capacity, prioritization, and delivery of platform initiatives
• Support hiring and onboarding as the team scales

Production Reliability & Incident Management

• Own production monitoring, observability, alerting, and tooling strategy
• Lead bug triage, including severity assessment, ownership assignment, and tracking resolution
• Drive root cause analysis (RCA) and implement systemic improvements
• Define and report reliability metrics (MTTR, defect rates, escape rates, etc.)
• Improve processes for incident intake, prioritization, and communication

Cross-Functional Communication

• Act as the primary technical contact for production issues
• Communicate clearly with Product and Customer Success teams on incidents and status
• Translate technical issues into business-friendly updates
• Coordinate with engineering teams to ensure efficient resolution of production issues

Platform Engineering & Enablement

• Oversee CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure, monitoring, and internal data platforms (including Power BI ecosystems)
• Deliver scalable self-service capabilities for engineering teams
• Define and uphold engineering standards (security, testing, observability, deployment)
• Evaluate build vs buy decisions and manage vendor relationships
• Partner with engineering teams to shape the platform roadmap

Quality Engineering Strategy

• Lead QA automation strategy and integration into CI/CD pipelines
• Promote a shift-left approach to quality across engineering teams
• Use production data and defect trends to improve test coverage and prevention strategies

Leadership Expectations

• Communicate and cascade company vision, strategy, and objectives
• Ensure team engagement, performance, and capability development
• Address performance issues and support continuous improvement
• Provide clear direction, remove blockers, and enable delivery
• Foster a culture of accountability, learning, and collaboration

Qualifications & Experience

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field
• 5+ years in DevOps, platform engineering, SRE, or software engineering
• 5+ years in technical leadership or people management roles
• Strong experience with CI/CD pipelines, cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP)
• Experience owning production reliability, incident response, and system improvements
• Strong communication skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Experience working in SaaS product environments
• Ability to manage competing priorities and execute against strategy

Preferred

• Experience in quality assurance, DevOps, or platform engineering leadership
• Strong background in observability, monitoring, and reliability engineering
• Experience with data platforms and analytics environments
• Strong capability in mentoring, stakeholder management, and strategic thinking

Core Competencies

Leadership, Platform Engineering, Reliability Engineering, QA Strategy, Problem Solving, Strategic Thinking, Communication, Team Development, Cloud Infrastructure, CI/CD, Incident Management, Stakeholder Management