Distinguished Engineer, Investment Systems

HarbourVest Partners; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

HarbourVest Partners is seeking a Distinguished Engineer to architect and guide our investment platforms, leading the design and delivery of private markets front-office applications. This senior role focuses on scalable financial technology, AI features, and production-grade systems using LLMs, RAG, and agentic capabilities on HarbourVest's proprietary data.

The ideal candidate excels at architectural mentorship, collaboration across teams, and translating investment needs into robust, scalable

Qualifications

• Demonstrated leadership shaping software architecture.
• Experience delivering AI/ML powered financial applications.
• Strong background in distributed systems and production-grade delivery.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the technical architecture for investment systems.
• Lead end-to-end design, coding, execution and testing pipelines.
• Mentor teams on software, data, and AI engineering practices.

Skills

Architectural leadership

AI/ML

Distributed systems

Software delivery

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

LLMs

RAG pipelines

Agentic systems

Job description

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.

Our Investment Platforms group is seeking a Distinguished Engineer to architect and guide our technical teams, to lead the design, delivery and long-term evolution of our private equity and private credit front office applications. This is a senior technical leadership role for someone who sets architectural direction and stays close to the code. You will guide how we build scalable financial technology systems and modern AI features. These features support our investment staff's decisions and improve engineering standards across all teams you impact. A core part of this role is crafting and delivering distributed financial technology solutions. You will modernize them using Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and agentic systems. These solutions will be put into production using our proprietary private markets data.

This hybrid position spans both application development and artificial intelligence development, requiring equal depth in platform architecture and applied AI

The ideal candidate is:

• A technical leader who can provide architectural mentorship and influence teams without relying solely on formal authority

• A self-starter with a love for technology, software application delivery, AI/ML, and mathematical applications

• Experienced in taking generative AI solutions from prototype to reliable, production-grade systems

• Equipped with excellent interpersonal skills to work well across multiple teams

• Possessed strong analytical, organizational, and problem-solving skills as well as with outstanding attention to detail

• Passionate about building tools to enable private and financial investment systems
  

What you will do:

• Be responsible for the technical architecture for our investment systems, translating investment department needs into scalable, maintainable solutions

• Lead features end to end design, code, run, and maintain pipelines, transformations, views, and test suites for applications and data validation

• Establish engineering standards and provide mentorship to team members on software, data, and AI engineering practices

• Build and deliver sophisticated AI technologies, LLM-powered applications, RAG pipelines, and autonomous and human-in-the-loop agents grounded in HarbourVest's proprietary data

• Apply AI across the SDLC, using AI-assisted development, testing, and code review to accelerate delivery and quality

• Serve as a technical point of reference, reviewing designs and working with the firm's Architecture Review Board to