Lead Platform Engineer

Overview

The Foundation is a large nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. We aim to help people live healthy, productive lives regardless of identity or circumstances. We value diversity and offer an exceptional benefits package, including comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contributions, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in employee communities. We strive to create an environment for employees to thrive personally and professionally.

Responsibilities

• Lead Platform Engineer: act as a technical leader responsible for architecting, delivering, and evolving complex technology solutions supporting foundation and affiliate staff worldwide. Provide independent, hands-on leadership as a subject matter expert and practice lead; mentor engineers; translate complex problems into actionable, tactical plans; partner across service teams; be accountable for outcomes.
• Technology & Architecture Leadership: define and evolve multi-year Data & AI platform roadmaps aligned to enterprise architecture, security standards, and business strategies. Understand global business needs, translate requirements into design artifacts, and implement data and AI tooling for the Enterprise Data Platform (EDP). Implement governance controls and security best practices; provide platform architectural leadership and hands-on development of frameworks; guide build vs. buy decisions and ensure alignment with enterprise direction.
• Solution Delivery & Continuous Improvement: develop design patterns for data and AI applications on EDP, manage a lightweight Data Portal for self-service data cataloging and data sharing; hands-on execution; oversee large multi-team delivery efforts with modern engineering and DevSecOps practices; conduct architectural reviews; champion automation, governance, observability, and operational excellence; pilot emerging technologies and guide their adoption; drive continuous improvement of engineering practices.
• Service & Portfolio Strategy: partner with service managers and product owners to shape service roadmaps and investment priorities; translate complex system challenges into actionable plans to improve sustainability, lifecycle health, and user experience; contribute to annual planning and resource considerations; align technology with business strategy.
• Leadership, Influence & Collaboration: serve as a practice lead and mentor; build strong relationships across IT, Business Operations, and programmatic teams; lead cross-functional architecture discussions; communicate complex concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences; represent IT in governance forums and cross-team initiatives.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in computer science or related field or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of experience in data platforms with focus on advanced analytics, AI/ML infrastructure, data security, and automation.
• Experience with data platform architecture, processing of unstructured data, and extracting insights; experience with health and life sciences data; proficiency with Databricks, Azure (Data Lake, Azure ML, Event Hubs), Terraform, Snowflake (Cortex, data sharing), and API-driven data platforms.
• Hands-on experience with Databricks (Lakeflow, Spark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog), Docker, Kubernetes; API gateways; data cataloging and governance (Collibra); data sharing with internal/external users.
• Strong understanding of RAG architectures, embeddings, vector databases, document processing/NLP pipelines (OCR, entity extraction, classification); cloud infrastructure (Azure preferred), networking, security, automation, and cost optimization.
• CI/CD, infrastructure as code, modern version control; programming/scripting in C#/.NET, Python, or PowerShell is desirable.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills; unrestricted work authorization in the country of employment; no immigration sponsorship is provided.

Salary & Location

The salary range for this role is $190,100 to $294,700 USD. In Seattle and Washington DC offices, the range is $209,100 to $324,100 USD. New hires typically fall within the range minimum to midpoint based on skills and experience.

Hiring Requirements & Inclusion

Employment is contingent upon successful background check. We provide accommodations for candidates with disabilities. We are committed to inclusion and equal opportunity regardless of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, or prior protected activity. The foundation is based in Seattle, Washington, led by CEO Mark Suzman, with Bill Gates and a governing board.