{"id":517490,"url":"https://alion.io/job/gatesfoundation-lead-platform-engineer","title":"Lead Platform Engineer","company":{"id":232403,"name":"Gates Foundation","domain":"gatesfoundation.org","url":"https://alion.io/company/gatesfoundation","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":null},"role":"DevOps","role_family":"DevOps","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Seattle, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":190100,"max":294700,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":294700},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":12,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":".NET","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"C#","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Claude","optional":false},{"name":"Collibra","optional":false},{"name":"Cortex","optional":false},{"name":"Databricks","optional":false},{"name":"Delta Lake","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"Embeddings","optional":false},{"name":"GraphQL","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"NLP","optional":false},{"name":"OCR","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":false},{"name":"PowerShell","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Rest API","optional":false},{"name":"Snowflake","optional":false},{"name":"Spark","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"Prometheus","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-16T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-16","last_verified_at":"2026-10-29T23:11:06Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":106,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":105},"description":"The Foundation\nWe are the largest nonprofit fightingpoverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve.We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities.As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.\nThe Team\nWithin Business Operations and the Information Technology (IT) organization, the Enterprise Data Solutions (EDS) team leads work across Knowledge Management, AI, Data Engineering, Business Intelligence, Data Infrastructure, and Health Data Platforms. The team’s vision is to empower the Foundation with innovative, data and AI driven services and solutions that enable timely, informed decision-making.As part of this scope, the EDS team recently launched the Enterprise Data Platform (EDP) - the central hub for managing, analyzing, and sharing the Foundation’s data assets and enabling AI.\nYour Role\nAs a Lead Platform Engineer, you are an experienced, hands-on technical leader responsible for architecting, delivering, and evolving complex technology solutions that support foundation and affiliate staff around the world. You operate with a high degree of independence, serving as a subject matter expert and acting as a practice lead who contributes to technical execution, builds team capability and mentors engineers. You translate complex organizational and technical problems into actionable, tactical plans, partnering across service teams and being accountable for outcomes-not just deliverables.\nIn this role, you provide technical leadership across multiple platforms and domains, shape solution strategy, contribute to technical execution and guide engineering excellence across the organization. You serve as a trusted advisor to IT leadership and business partners, helping translate long-term organizational needs into scalable, secure, sustainable technology capabilities. You influence architectural direction, coach engineering teams, and ensure the overall health, usability, and reliability of the systems entrusted to your stewardship. Your work directly strengthens the foundation’s ability to operate effectively and advance its mission globally.\nWhat You’ll Do\nTechnology & Architecture Leadership\nDefine and evolve multi-year Data and AI platform roadmaps aligned to enterprise architecture, security standards, and business strategies.\n\nWork with business leaders globally to understand business needs, translate requirements to meaningful design artifacts and implement data and AI tooling for Enterprise Data Platform (EDP).\n\nImplement Data and AI governance controls, data and platform level security best practices as we continue to build out EDP.\n\nProvide platform architectural leadership and hands-on development of frameworks (example: Data Classification, data auditing, etc.) on complex, cross-team initiatives, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, resilient, and maintainable.\n\nLead platform tools, frameworks and vendor evaluations, guiding build vs. buy decisions and ensuring alignment with enterprise technical direction.\n\nDevelop and promote engineering standards, reference architectures, and data access design patterns used across IT and partner teams.\n\nAnticipate technology impacts across applications, data, integrations, and infrastructure-and guide teams through informed trade-off decisions including assessing new technology.\n\nSolution Delivery & Continuous Improvement\nDevelop design patterns for developing and governing data and agentic AI applications on EDP using Databricks foundation models, OpenAI, Claude, Snowflake Cortex etc.\n\nManage and drive improvements of a lightweight custom application (Data Portal) for self-service data cataloging, search and discovery and data sharing with internal and external users.\n\nDay-to-day hands-on execution and implementation of solutions, initiatives, processes and practices.\n\nLead and oversee technical direction for large multi-team delivery efforts, ensuring application of modern engineering and DevSecOps practices through completion.\n\nConduct architectural and technical reviews of solution designs, code, and delivery approaches to raise quality and consistency.\n\nChampion automation, governance, observability, and operational excellence to ensure platforms remain reliable, performant, and cost effective.\n\nPilot emerging technologies and guide their adoption into stable enterprise capabilities when appropriate.\n\nDrive continuous improvement of engineering practices, tooling, automation and operational processes.\n\nService & Portfolio Strategy\nPartner with service managers and product owners to shape service strategies, roadmaps, and investment priorities.\n\nTranslate complex system challenges into actionable plans that improve sustainability, lifecycle health, and user experience.\n\nProvide senior-level input to annual planning, including resource needs, modernization opportunities, risks, and capacity considerations.\n\nRepresent technology perspectives in strategic and portfolio discussions, ensuring alignment between business direction and technical capability.\n\nLeadership, Influence & Collaboration\nServe as a practice lead, SME and senior mentor; coach engineers and contingent staff, as well as manage service partners.\n\nBuild strong, collaborative relationships across IT, Business Operations, and programmatic teams.\n\nLead cross-functional architecture and design discussions, guiding teams through ambiguity with clarity, sound judgment, and tactical planning.\n\nCommunicate effectively across technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership, translating complex concepts into clear implications and recommendations.\n\nRepresent IT in foundation working groups, governance forums, and cross-team initiatives, ensuring alignment with broader strategies and priorities.\n\nLead core initiatives partnering across PSTs, Ops and IT.\n\nYour Experience\nBachelor’s or master’s in computer science or related field or equivalent experience.\n\n12+ years’ experience in data platforms with a focus on advanced analytics, AI/ML Infrastructure, data security and automation.\n\nExperience in implementing managed and custom MCP servers.\n\nExperience in working on data platform architecture, processing of unstructured data and extracting insights.\n\nExperience with analyzing and extracting insights from health and life sciences data (internal and external public repositories) using analytical and reporting tools.\n\nExperienced in working with business users and co-developing solutions on EDP using Databricks, Azure and governing AI applications.\n\nHands-on experience with:\nAzure (Data Lake, Azure ML, Event Hubs, etc.)\n\nIaC automating infrastructure provisioning using Terraform\n\nDatabricks experience is a must (Lakeflow, Spark, Delta Lake, Databricks Applications, Unity Catalog)\n\nSnowflake (Iceberg, Horizon catalog, Cortex AI, secure data sharing)\n\nExperience designing and building API-driven data platforms (REST/GraphQL, microservices), and API/AI gateways.\n\nExperience with data sharing with internal and external users, cataloging external data platforms is preferred.\n\nFamiliarity with building data pipelines with Databricks and DBT Cloud and orchestration.\n\nFamiliarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and distributed systems.\n\nAdditional qualifications:\nStrong understanding of:\nRAG architectures, embeddings, and vector databases.\n\nDocument chunking, indexing, and retrieval strategies.\n\nExperience with document processing/NLP pipelines (OCR, entity extraction, classification).\n\nCollibra data catalog and Data Governance.\n\nDeep expertise with cloud-based infrastructure (Azure preferred), networking, identity, security, automation, and cost optimization.\n\nAdvanced experience with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, cloud-native operational models, and modern version control strategies.\n\nProficiency with programming and scripting languages such as C# .Net, Python, or PowerShell is desirable.\n\nPrevious experience with Salesforce would be a plus.\n\nExcellent communication and influencing skills.\n\n*Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located.\nThe Foundation does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. This includes direct company sponsorship and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (eg: H-1B, O-1, L-1, E, OPT, STEM-OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.).\nThe salary range for this role is $190,100 to $294,700 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences in Seattle and Washington D.C., where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $209,100 to $324,100 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hires salaries are typically between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate’s job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.\nHiring Requirements\nAs part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.\nCandidate Accommodations\nWe’re committed to providing an inclusive and accessible hiring experience for all candidates. If you have a disability or medical condition and need an accommodation at any stage of the application or interview process-such as an ASL interpreter, alternative interview format, or physical accessibility support-we’re happy to help. Please contact  the position number and a brief description of your accommodation needs. Requests will be handled confidentially.\nInclusion Statement\nWe are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion - of voices, ideas, and approaches - and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.\nAll applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.","description_format":"text","description_chars":10801,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":12,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Health Care","Professional Services","Vaccines","Nonprofits & Foundations"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-07T21:27:09Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 9","filings_12m":9,"filings_prev_12m":6,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":252500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":11,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.39,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":105,"expected_fill_days":26,"reasons":["conf:5","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":294700,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/gatesfoundation-lead-platform-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/gatesfoundation-lead-platform-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-30T04:19:41Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":5837,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-31T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":232403},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=232403"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fgatesfoundation-lead-platform-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fgatesfoundation-lead-platform-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fgatesfoundation-lead-platform-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/gatesfoundation-lead-platform-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fgatesfoundation-lead-platform-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":517490}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"gatesfoundation.org","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":517490},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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