Deputy VP Platform Engineering

Volta; Germany (OH); On-site; USD 250,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

Volta builds and operates large-scale GPU compute infrastructure for frontier AI customers. The Deputy VP Platform Engineering leads the organisation behind Volta’s internal software stacks, including IaaS and bare-metal management, and collaborates with the CTO and CPO to drive strategy and execution.

You will shape architecture, build a distributed organisation across US and EU, and own the roadmap from product direction to delivery. On-site in Palo Alto with travel to EU locations is expected.

Qualifications

• Experience building and scaling a software engineering organization at VP level.
• Ability to translate product strategy into platform engineering roadmap.
• Strong architecture and design review capabilities.
• Willingness to be onsite in Palo Alto with travel.
• Experience with IaaS, cloud platforms, and bare-metal management.
• Proven track record across US and EU teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the platform software strategy, including IaaS and bare-metal management.
• Translate CPO roadmap into engineering roadmap and execute.
• Make architectural calls to keep platform coherent as scope grows.
• Grow the platform team to 50+ engineers across US and EU.
• Build and mentor the director and leadership layer beneath you.
• Lead architecture reviews and drive technical debates.
• Partner with product and ensure security integration across SDLC.
• Represent the platform to customers and executive leadership.

Skills

Executive engineering leadership

Platform architecture

IaaS & bare-metal

Cloud and virtualization

Cross-functional collaboration

Team scaling

Security integration

Tools

KVM/QEMU

Ceph

SPDK

Kubernetes

Job description

About The Role

Volta builds and operates large-scale GPU compute infrastructure for frontier AI customers. The software that turns racks of GPUs into a usable platform is its own product, and it is the one you will own.

As Deputy VP Platform Engineering, you build and run the organisation behind Volta’s internal software stacks. Today that means the IaaS platform we are building and the software that provisions and manages the bare metal beneath it; over time the surface area grows toward the higher-level services that sit on top of an AI factory. You set the strategic direction for all of it under high-level guidance from the CTO, and you build the organisation that delivers it. You report to the CTO, sit alongside Volta’s other functional leaders, and lead a distributed organisation with a Director, Platform Engineering, EMEA acting as your deputy in Europe.

This is a building role, not a caretaking one. Volta’s reality is close to the hardware, and the platform you own only works if it stays coherent with the physical layers beneath it. You will be a trusted engineering partner to the CPO and product organisation, close enough to move in lockstep on product direction without sitting inside their reporting line.

What You Will Be Doing

• Own the strategy for Volta’s platform software - the IaaS and bare-metal management stacks, the operational and analytics tooling on the data centre layer, and the build-versus-buy calls as the business scales.

• Translate the product roadmap owned by the CPO into a concrete platform engineering roadmap, in strategic alignment with the CTO, and own execution against it.

• Make the architectural calls that keep the platform coherent as scope and headcount grow.

• Grow the platform engineering organisation from its current size toward 50-plus engineers across the US and EU, deliberately and without lowering the hiring bar.

• Build the management and technical‑lead layer beneath you, including hiring the Director, Platform Engineering, EMEA as your deputy.

• Define team structure, ownership boundaries and the engineering practices that keep a fast‑growing, distributed organisation shipping.

• Lead architecture and design reviews, drive the hard technical debates, and own the boundary between the platform software and the hardware layers beneath it.

• Partner with the CPO and product organisation on platform direction, without that partnership running through a reporting line.

• Keep tight, well‑defined boundaries with Infrastructure Engineering, Network Engineering and the CDO’s organisation, and embed security with Cyber Security Engineering across the SDLC.

• Represent the platform in front of customers and at the executive level inside and outside Volta.

What You Bring

• A track record of building and scaling a software engineering organisation at VP or equivalent level, from a small team toward 50-plus people, including org design, hiring, and a layer of managers and leads reporting into you.

• Executive engineering leadership where you set direction and own outcomes across a function, not pure people‑management - and you are still credible in a design review.

• A clear, demonstrable understanding of what sits under the hood of a cloud service: virtualisation, storage, networking, multi‑tenancy and the bare‑metal layer beneath them.

• Solid working knowledge of the hardware involved, enough to keep the layers coherent and to reason about where software meets the GPU, fabric and storage reality.

• Experience owning and evolving existing production systems, not only greenfield builds.

• The maturity to take high‑level direction and turn it into strategy and execution without needing the details handed to you.

• The judgment to work across organisational boundaries with peer engineering and infrastructure leaders, defining clean seams rather than fighting over them.

• Comfort with full‑time on‑site presence in our Palo Alto office and travel as needed across a US and EU distributed organisation.

Nice to Have

• Direct experience with an IaaS or cloud platform, whether built or operated at scale.

• Background at a neocloud, hyper‑scaler, GPU cloud or HPC environment where the software platform was the product.

• Familiarity with technologies in our current stack: KVM/QEMU virtualisation, Ceph and SPDK storage, BGP/VXLAN networking, Kubernetes operators, PXE/Flatcar provisioning, and languages such as Go, Python and Rust.

• Experience integrating or levelling up an inherited or acquired engineering team.

• Experience where software and physical infrastructure teams had to stay tightly aligned.

• Exposure to building higher‑level services on top of an infrastructure platform.