Head of Engineering
Our client is building a modern data and AI platform designed to support intelligent, scalable applications across the enterprise. We are partnering with them to identify a Head of Engineering who can combine deep technical architecture expertise with strong engineering leadership and execution.
This is a high-impact opportunity for a hands-on technology leader who understands how to build and scale cloud-native data platforms, production AI systems, and high-performing engineering teams. You will have significant influence over architecture, engineering standards, technical strategy, and the evolution of the platform.
What You'll Own
Platform Architecture & Technical Strategy
- Own the overall architecture and technical direction of a modern AWS and Databricks-based data platform.
- Translate product and business priorities into scalable platform capabilities, engineering roadmaps, and delivery milestones.
- Establish architectural standards across data, applications, AI, infrastructure, security, and deployment.
- Drive the evolution of the platform as new data, AI, and application use cases are introduced.
- Define governance approaches covering data access, lineage, security, and platform controls.
Data, AI & Agentic Systems
- Lead the engineering strategy for production-grade AI and agentic applications built on governed enterprise data.
- Oversee the development of data ingestion pipelines, semantic layers, knowledge structures, RAG architectures, and AI-enabled applications.
- Guide technical decisions around LLM orchestration, autonomous workflows, retrieval architectures, and enterprise AI deployment.
- Ensure AI solutions are scalable, secure, observable, and grounded in trusted data.
Engineering Delivery & Platform Operations
- Establish strong engineering practices across software development, platform engineering, data engineering, and machine learning.
- Implement and mature CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, monitoring, and observability.
- Define expectations for platform availability, data quality, reliability, and operational performance.
- Ensure engineering delivery consistently meets enterprise security and compliance requirements.
- Provide leadership around incident management, production stability, and ongoing platform optimization.
Team & Partner Leadership
- Lead a multidisciplinary engineering organization spanning data engineering, ML/AI engineering, platform engineering, and application development.
- Manage a blended delivery model that includes both internal engineering resources and external development partners.
- Hold outside engineering partners accountable for technical quality, delivery speed, and alignment with platform standards.
- Build scalable hiring, development, and retention practices as the organization grows.
- Own engineering-related budget planning across internal talent and third-party resources.
- Foster a culture centered on technical excellence, experimentation, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Cross-Functional Partnership
- Partner closely with product leadership to shape platform capabilities and user-facing experiences.
- Collaborate with security and compliance stakeholders to maintain enterprise-grade governance and controls.
- Communicate architecture decisions, technical risks, and tradeoffs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
What We're Looking For
- Significant experience leading architecture and engineering for modern cloud-based data platforms.
- Deep knowledge of the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, including technologies such as Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Delta Live Tables, and Mosaic AI.
- Strong AWS architecture experience across services such as S3, Glue, EMR, Lake Formation, IAM, VPC, and KMS.
- Experience designing and operating modern data architectures, semantic models, knowledge graphs, and retrieval-based AI systems.
- Practical experience building or overseeing production AI, LLM, RAG, or agentic systems.
- Familiarity with platforms and services such as Databricks Mosaic AI, Genie, Amazon SageMaker, Bedrock, and Redshift.
- Strong understanding of data governance, security, lineage, deployment, and enterprise platform reliability.
- Experience establishing engineering standards, code-quality practices, and modern agile delivery processes.
- Proven ability to lead both internal technical teams and outsourced engineering partners.
- Experience managing engineering budgets, including headcount and third-party technology or delivery costs.
- Strong executive communication skills with the ability to turn complex technical topics into clear business decisions.
- Multi-cloud architecture experience is helpful but not required.
Why This Opportunity
This role offers the chance to influence the foundation of a growing data and AI platform rather than simply inherit a mature engineering environment. The Head of Engineering will have meaningful ownership across architecture, AI strategy, engineering execution, team development, and long-term platform scalability.
For a technology leader who enjoys staying close to the architecture while also building teams and shaping strategy, this is an opportunity to make a significant impact at an important stage of growth.