Director, Platform Engineering

Visa; Foster City (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Visa is seeking a Director, Platform Engineering in Foster City to lead a portfolio of mission-critical platform services enabling the company's data, AI, and hybrid-cloud ecosystem. You will oversee execution, reliability, and engineering excellence while building and guiding high-performing teams across US and India.

The role requires strategic leadership, strong collaboration with architecture and product teams, and a focus on operational maturity and customer impact.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of work experience with a Bachelor's Degree or at least 8 years with an Advanced Degree or 3+ years with a PhD.
• Experience leading platform teams delivering data, analytics, AI, and cloud workloads.
• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute strategic roadmaps for Platform Engineering aligned with data, AI, and hybrid-cloud goals.
• Lead large-scale platform services ensuring reliability, security, and cost efficiency.
• Engage with senior stakeholders and partner across Product, Infrastructure, Security, and Operations.

Skills

Leadership

Platform engineering

Cloud-native

Automation

Incident management

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher

Tools

Data Platform tools

Job description

About Us

Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale - tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters - to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Job Description

Visa's Data Trust & Platform Engineering (DTPE) organization delivers the foundational platforms that power Visa's enterprise data, analytics, AI, and cloud ecosystem. DTPE is responsible for advancing secure, scalable, governed, and resilient data platform capabilities spanning hybrid-cloud infrastructure, compute, storage, streaming, orchestration, data governance, privacy, quality, and platform engineering services.

We are seeking a seasoned Director, Platform Engineering to lead a strategically important Platform Engineering organization based in Foster City. This leader will own execution, operational excellence, customer engagement, and technology strategy for a portfolio of mission‑critical platform services that enable Visa's modern data and AI ecosystem.

As the senior DTPE engineering leader in Foster City, this role will act as the primary interface between platform engineering teams, data product organizations, architecture leaders, and executive stakeholders. The Director will drive platform modernization, hybrid‑cloud adoption, engineering excellence, reliability, and operational maturity while building and leading high‑performing engineering teams.

This position requires a strong blend of technical leadership, organizational influence, business acumen, customer obsession, and operational rigor.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership

Define and execute the strategic roadmap for Platform Engineering aligned with Visa's enterprise data, AI, and hybrid‑cloud transformation objectives.

Partner with senior leadership to shape long‑term investment priorities, technology direction, and modernization initiatives.

Lead organizational planning, workforce strategy, succession planning, and engineering capability development.

Drive adoption of engineering best practices, automation, AI‑assisted development, and platform self‑service models.

Platform & Technology Leadership

Provide leadership for large‑scale platform services supporting data, analytics, AI, and mission‑critical enterprise workloads.

Drive modernization of platform architecture, cloud‑native adoption, infrastructure automation, developer productivity, and platform reliability.

Establish engineering standards for scalability, resilience, observability, security, compliance, and cost efficiency.

Partner with architects and distinguished engineers to define technology roadmaps and future‑state platform architectures.

Business & Stakeholder Engagement

Serve as the Foster City DTPE leader and primary point of engagement for US‑based customers, partners, and engineering organizations.

Build strong partnerships across Data Platform, Product, Infrastructure, Security, Operations, and Architecture organizations.

Influence senior executives and stakeholders to align investments, priorities, and execution plans.

Represent DTPE in executive reviews, planning cycles, operational governance forums, and strategic transformation initiatives.

Engineering Delivery & Operational Excellence

Own delivery outcomes, service reliability, production readiness, and operational health for Platform Engineering services.

Drive measurable improvements in availability, performance, efficiency, developer experience, and platform adoption.

Lead incident management governance, operational reviews, risk management, and remediation programs.

Establish metrics‑driven management practices centered on business outcomes, engineering productivity, and customer satisfaction.

Organizational Leadership

Lead and develop managers and senior engineering leaders.

Build a high‑performing culture centered on accountability, innovation, inclusion, and technical excellence.

Drive talent acquisition, retention, leadership development, and organizational effectiveness.

Foster collaboration across geographically distributed teams spanning the US and India.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

• 10 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor's Degree or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters/ MBA/JD/MD) or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD

Preferred Qualifications:

• 12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor's Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work