Head of Platform Engineering - Control Plane

As the Head of Platform Engineering – Control Plane, you will lead the development and implementation of our platform control plane initiatives which include governance layer as a code and all control functions directing our execution plan. Your role is pivotal in building and scaling a highly flexible, scalable, governed execution plane. You will: You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, stakeholders, and technology partners to develop and integrate automation solutions that drive business growth, improve customer experiences, and reduce operational costs. You have: Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, engineering, management or a related field. Strong people leadership experience managing software engineering teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and developing senior technical talent. Deep hands-on technical background designing, building, and operating distributed, cloud-native platform services in production. Experience leading platform, infrastructure, developer platform, AI/ML platform, security platform, or other reusable enterprise engineering capabilities. Ability to own the roadmap and delivery for control plane capabilities such as identity and access management, tenant boundaries, policy enforcement, approvals, evaluation gates, observability, auditability, FinOps, secrets management, and lifecycle/promotion workflows. Strong understanding of enterprise governance, security, risk, compliance, and operational controls required to safely run AI or data-intensive systems in production. Experience building reliable APIs, registries, workflow services, policy engines, or orchestration services with clear contracts for downstream engineering teams. Proven ability to drive engineering excellence through architecture reviews, design standards, testing, CI/CD, observability, incident response, reliability practices, and operational metrics. Ability to partner effectively with product, architecture, security, risk, compliance, operations, and domain engineering teams to turn ambiguous platform needs into scalable engineering outcomes. Strong communication and influence skills, with the ability to simplify complex technical topics for senior stakeholders and align teams around platform standards. High ownership mindset with a bias for durable, reusable platform capabilities over one-off solutions. You will: Experience with agentic AI systems, LLM platforms, model gateways, tool/action gateways, agent registries, evaluation frameworks, or AI developer tooling. Familiarity with AI governance patterns such as prompt-injection defense, PII handling, output filtering, risk tiering, model/tool allow-lists, HITL controls, and audit trails. Experience with AWS-based platform engineering, including services such as Bedrock, SageMaker, Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, EKS, IAM, CloudWatch, and related DevOps tooling. Experience designing or operating multi-tenant platforms with RBAC/ABAC, entitlement models, service accounts, policy-as-code, and secure cross-account or cross-environment access patterns. Knowledge of observability, tracing, telemetry, cost attribution, and platform-level operational dashboards for enterprise-scale systems. Experience establishing developer-friendly paved roads, reference architectures, templates, SDKs, CLI tools, or self-service workflows that improve adoption and reduce support burden. Experience working in regulated environments where security, compliance, data residency, retention, and auditability are first-class platform requirements. Background in MLOps, LLMOps, AIOps, model lifecycle management, or production AI operations. Experience with vendor integration strategies that preserve portability and avoid lock-in through stable platform interfaces and clear architectural contracts. Comfort operating in a matrixed, global organization with onshore/offshore teams, multiple stakeholders, and evolving platform priorities. Location: New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania Up to 10% travel within US Our promise: At Guardian, you’ll have the support and flexibility to achieve your professional and personal goals. Through skill-building, leadership development and philanthropic opportunities, we provide opportunities to build communities and grow your career, surrounded by diverse colleagues with high ethical standards We offer: Meaningful and challenging work opportunities to accelerate technology and innovation in a secure and compliant way Competitive compensation Excellent medical, dental, supplemental health, life and vision coverage for you and your dependents with no wait period Life and disability insurance A great 401(k) with match Tuition assistance, paid parental leave and backup family care Dynamic, modern work environments that promote collaboration and creativity Flexible time off, dress code, and work location policies to balance your work and life in the ways that suit you best Social responsibility in all aspects of our work. We volunteer within our local communities, create educational alliances with colleges, drive a variety of initiatives in sustainability, and advocate for diversity and inclusion in all that we do. About Guardian: Every day, Guardian provides Americans the security they deserve through our insurance and wealth management products and services. Since our founding in 1860, our long-term view has helped our customers prepare for whatever life brings whether starting a family, planning for the future or taking care of employees. Today, we're a Fortune 250 mutual company and a leading provider of life, disability, dental, and other benefits for individuals, at the workplace and through government sponsored programs. The Guardian community of 9,500 employees and our network of over 2,700 financial representatives is committed to serving with expertise when, where and how our clients need us. Our commitments rest on a strong financial foundation, which at year-end 2018 included $8.5 billion in capital and $1.6 billion in operating income. For more information, please visit guardianlife.com or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. Equal Employment Opportunity: Guardian is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law. Guardian® is a registered trademark of the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. Salary Range: $152,290.00 - $250,195.00 The salary range reflected above is a good faith estimate of base pay for the primary location of the position. The salary for this position ultimately will be determined based on the education, experience, knowledge, and abilities of the successful candidate. In addition to salary, this role may also be eligible for annual, sales, or other incentive compensation. Our Promise At Guardian, you’ll have the support and flexibility to achieve your professional and personal goals. Through skill-building, leadership development and philanthropic opportunities, we provide opportunities to build communities and grow your career, surrounded by diverse colleagues with high ethical standards. Inspire Well-Being As part of Guardian’s Purpose – to inspire well-being – we are committed to offering contemporary, supportive, flexible, and inclusive benefits and resources to our colleagues. Explore our company benefits at Benefits apply to full-time eligible employees. Interns are not eligible for most Company benefits. Equal Employment Opportunity Guardian is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law. Accommodations Guardian is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. Guardian also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified job applicants (and employees) to accommodate the individual's known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless doing so would create an undue hardship. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact View email address on click.appcast.io. Please note: this resource is for accommodation requests only. For all other inquires related to your application and careers at Guardian, refer to the Guardian Careers site. Visa Sponsorship Guardian is not currently or in the foreseeable future sponsoring employment visas. In order to be a successful applicant. you must be legally authorized to work in the United States, without the need for employer sponsorship. Notice Regarding Guardian’s Use of Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment As part of Guardian’s job application process, Guardian may use artificial intelligence tools (“AI Tools") to automate the sorting and filtering of information provided by applicants as part of its preliminary screening. This preliminary screening may be used to help identify applicant materials and resumes relative to their indication that the applicant meets the requirements for the specific job for which they are applying, as specified in the listing posted on Guardian’s jobs website (Careers at Guardian at At Guardian, we do not use AI Tools to substantially assist or replace human judgment or discretionary decision making in our hiring process. All hiring decisions will be made by Guardian colleagues. Please be aware that if you apply for a specific position with Guardian, you will have the choice of opting out of Guardian’s use of AI Tools during the job application process. If you would like to request an alternative process that does not utilize AI Tools or would like to request a reasonable accommodation, within ten business days of your position application, you must email your request to View email address on click.appcast.io, making sure to provide your name and job requisition identification number. Guardian will retain your applicant materials and resume and all information therefrom in accordance with Guardian’s document retention policy, a copy of which you may request via View email address on click.appcast.io. Additionally, at applicable times, Guardian will make public the most recent bias audit results for such AI tools, which may be found here. Current Guardian Colleagues: Please apply through the internal Jobs Hub in Workday. Every day, Guardian helps our 29 million customers realize their dreams through a range of insurance and financial products and services. Our Purpose, to inspire well-being, guides our dedication to the colleagues, consumers, and communities we serve. We know that people count, and we go above and beyond to prepare them for the life they want to live, focusing on their overall well-being — mind, body, and wallet. As one of the largest mutual insurance companies, we put our customers first. Behind every bright future is a GuardianTM. Learn more about Guardian at guardianlife.com. Visa Sponsorship: Guardian Life is not currently or in the foreseeable future sponsoring employment visas. In order to be a successful applicant, you must be legally authorized to work in the United States, without the need for employer sponsorship.