Director, Platform Engineering

Job Description Summary

For over forty years, HarbourVest has been home to a committed team of professionals with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to deliver impactful solutions to our clients and investing partners. As our global firm grows, we continue to add individuals who seek a collaborative, open-door culture that values diversity and innovative thinking.

In our collegial environment, that’s marked by low turnover and high energy, you’ll be inspired to grow and thrive. Here, you will be encouraged to build on your strengths and acquire new skills and experiences.

We are committed to fostering an environment of inclusion that promotes mutual respect among all employees. Understanding and valuing these differences optimizes the potential of both the individual and the firm.

HarbourVest is an equal opportunity employer.

This position will be a hybrid work arrangement. You will receive 18 remote workdays per quarter to use at your discretion, subject to manager approval. For example, you may choose to work in the office 4 days per week and take one remote day weekly (typically 13 weeks per quarter), leaving 5 additional remote days to be used as needed.

We are seeking a director to lead our Platform Engineering. We are searching for a highly respected, hands-on technology leader. They define a cohesive platform architecture, set long-term technical direction, and lead modernization efforts across the firm. This enables scale, agility, resilience, and growth.

As a Director of Platform Engineering, you will adhere to the firm’s target-state architecture across applications, integration, cloud environments, and shared engineering capabilities! You will partner closely with engineering leadership, product and delivery teams, data and security stakeholders, vendors, and enterprise technology partners to enhance and grow our One Platform strategy and guide sophisticated modernization initiatives from concept through adoption. This role will simplify a fragmented technology landscape and improve interoperability. It will enable reusable platform capabilities. It ensures the company’s technological infrastructure can support future business expansion.

You bring deep expertise in modern application build and platform structure and apply that expertise to build scalable, secure, and durable technology patterns across the enterprise. You are fluent in architectural design patterns and modern engineering practices, including microservices, micro-frontends, event-driven systems, cloud-native development, DevOps, and modern web application engineering. You lead through influence and hands-on technical credibility, helping teams make sound architectural decisions while raising engineering quality, consistency, and ongoing structural durability within the organization.

The ideal candidate is:

• Hands-on knowledge of microservices architecture, micro-frontend architecture, and event-driven design patterns in complex enterprise environments
• Strong experience with cloud infrastructure development and cloud-native architecture, preferably in Azure, including scalable application patterns, integration, identity, networking, observability, and resilience
• Proven grasp of DevOps principles and the processes involved in delivering software, including CI/CD, infrastructure automation, environment strategy, and release governance
• Expertise in contemporary web application development and architecture, including frameworks and technologies like Angular, React, TypeScript, Node.js, and development dedicated to web-based interfaces
• Experience developing distributed systems that make use of Redis for caching, Kafka for messaging, and robust data access layer patterns
• Strong understanding of integration, interoperability, data flow, and domain boundaries across enterprise software and infrastructures
• Outstanding communication skills, confirmed by the capacity to translate architectural strategy and technical tradeoffs into clear recommendations for engineering leaders, executives, and non-technical partners

What you will do:

• Set technical direction for platform engineering within the organization.
• Guide modernization projects that transition legacy applications and platforms toward modern architectures such as microservices, event-driven systems, and micro-frontend-based user experiences
• Drive standardization and reuse across the engineering organization by defining shared frameworks, common services, and architectural building blocks that reduce redundancy and complexity
• Provide hands-on technical mentorship for modern web system development involving technologies such as Angular, React, TypeScript, Node.js, alongside service layers built on APIs
• Mentor senior engineers, and foster a culture of engineering excellence, simplification, and continuous modernization
• Support additional critical initiatives as needed

What you bring:

• Proven success driving enterprise-wide modernization initiatives across applications, platforms, cloud, and integration domains
• Deep hands-on experience with modern architecture patterns such as distributed services, component-based frontends, event-centric architecture, principles driven by a passion for the core business logic, and API-based integration
• Solid understanding of cloud engineering and distributed systems design, with experience building scalable, resilient, and observable solutions in enterprise environments
• Practical expertise with modern application development stacks and frameworks, featuring Angular and React technologies, TypeScript and Node.js programming, and up-to-date web application architecture patterns
• Experience with messaging, caching, and data access technologies and patterns, including Kafka, Redis, API integration, persistence strategies, and service-to-service communication
• Solid understanding of DevOps and software delivery processes, with a focus on CI/CD, automation, source control strategy, environment management, and release lifecycle considerations
• Ability to connect business goals to architecture strategy, translating organizational priorities into actionable technical roadmaps and standards
• Strong mentoring, collaboration, and communication skills, capable of raising architectural maturity and improving engineering efficiency within the enterprise

Nice to Have:

• Experience with application portfolio modernization, platform rationalization, and defining transition states for legacy-to-modern architecture journeys
• Familiarity with container platforms and orchestration technologies, such as Kubernetes or OpenShift, and how they contribute to current application architecture

Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in a technology-related field, advanced degree preferred, or equivalent experience
• 10+ years of experience spanning management, software engineering, cloud platforms, and large-scale technology modernization across sophisticated corporate landscapes

#LI-Hybrid

Base Salary Range

$200,000.00 - $210,000.00

This USD base salary range represents only one component of total compensation for this role and is provided in accordance with local requirements. This role is eligible for a discretionary annual bonus, which is determined based on individual and overall firm performance. In addition to salary and bonus eligibility, total compensation may include participation in long-term reward programs (typically for more senior-level roles). We also offer a comprehensive total rewards package that may include retirement contributions, health insurance, income protection, paid time off and leave benefits as well as well-being programs. Our total rewards offerings are influenced by several business factors, and eligibility for certain components will vary by position and geography. Please note the posted ranges do not apply outside the U.S. and should not be converted to other currencies as a proxy for compensation in other countries.