Head of Platform & Cloud Engineering

Spectrum Equity; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 145,000 - 175,000; Full time

Job summary

RapidRatings is seeking a deeply technical Senior Leader to own the cloud platform, resilience, security posture, and AI infrastructure powering RapidRatings' products. You will lead the SRE team, build paved-road infrastructure, and raise the bar for operational excellence across multi-region cloud systems.

The role blends low-level cloud architecture with platform engineering and requires hands-on experience in Kubernetes, AWS, and security controls, while guiding distributed teams and product

Qualifications

• Deep, hands-on Kubernetes (EKS) experience at scale.

Responsibilities

• Architect high-availability, multi-region AWS infrastructure.

Skills

Leadership & mentorship

Problem solving

Communication

Architectural design

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

Terraform/OpenTofu

Linux internals

Networking

SOC 2 / ISO 27001 controls

Python

Go

Bash

AI/LLM operations

Model hosting

Job description

RapidRatings

Software Engineering

New York, NY, USA

USD 145k-174,500 / year

Posted on Aug 29, 2026

Team: Platform & Cloud Engineering

Manages: SRE team

Location: Greater NYC or Boston Area - Hybrid: 3 days per week in the NYC or Quincy office

About RapidRatings

RapidRatings is a financial technology company on a mission to make the global economy more transparent and resilient. We provide quantitative financial health intelligence that helps enterprises understand the true condition of their suppliers and business partners, enabling smarter risk decisions across complex, global supply chains.

Role Overview

We are hiring a deeply technical senior leader to own the cloud platform, resilience, security posture, and AI infrastructure powering RapidRatings' products. The role blends deep systems engineering with modern SRE practice, bridging low-level cloud architecture, high-scale distributed systems, and platform engineering. As AI and developer self-service absorb routine pipeline toil, you will raise the technical bar for operational excellence, lead our SRE team, and build the paved-road infrastructure our AI systems, agents, and product squads run on.

What You'll Own

• AWS architecture & distributed systems. Architect high-availability, multi-region AWS infrastructure optimized for scale, latency, resilience, and structural reliability.
• Reliability & operational excellence. Lead the SRE function to establish robust telemetry, SLO frameworks, and rigorous root-cause analysis through blameless post-incident reviews. Drive self-healing automation that minimises operational overhead and mean-time-to-recovery.
• AI infrastructure. Build and operate the model-serving layer, routing pipelines, cost attribution, and governance frameworks for our AI agents, copilots, and Platform Model Context Protocols (MCPs).
• Security & compliance posture. Own the platform's threat detection and defense. Embed SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 controls directly into infrastructure code and automated guardrails.
• Paved-road platform & FinOps. Design self-service infrastructure patterns so engineering squads ship securely and without friction, while continuously driving cloud cost optimization.

What This Role Is Not

This is not pipeline maintenance. Product developers own their own build, test, and deployment workflows, using AI tooling on top of the paved road you provide. You build the foundational platform and guardrails, not application-level scripts. We're hiring for the leverage, not the toil.

Qualifications & Technical Bar

• Kubernetes at the core. Deep, hands-on experience running production Kubernetes (EKS) at scale - this is the backbone of our platform, not an add-on.
• AWS mastery. Deep, hands-on experience across the native AWS stack (EKS/ECS, IAM, VPC networking, CloudFront, Lambda, RDS/DynamoDB) and infrastructure as code (Terraform / OpenTofu).
• Systems engineering. Strong foundation in Linux internals, networking (TCP/IP, DNS, routing), performance tuning, and operating distributed systems at scale.
• Security & compliance. Direct experience implementing and maintaining SOC 2 and ISO 27001 technical controls within cloud-native environments.
• Software development. Proficiency in Python, Go, or Bash for building platform tooling, custom telemetry, and automated remediation.
• AI/LLM operations. Hands-on exposure to model-hosting patterns, vector databases, API gateways, and LLM orchestration infrastructure.
• Leadership & mentorship. Track record of managing distributed SRE/infrastructure teams, including international squads, while remaining directly involved in architectural design.

Who You Are

• A natural problem solver who stays curious, works logically, and digs past symptoms to root cause.
• You treat AI as a strong collaborator, building the platforms and guardrails that lift the whole engineering group rather than only your own output.
• You set technical direction and carry others with you through standards, design review, documentation, and mentoring.
• You communicate clearly across every tier, from technical specialists to the executive group, with meticulous attention to detail.
• You bring a calm, positive attitude under pressure, including during production incidents and against tight deadlines.

Role Shape

• Balance: roughly 50% technical architecture and systems design, 50% team management, SRE strategy, and mentorship. Deeply technical, still in the architecture.
• Scope: direct manager for the SRE team; the authoritative technical leader setting cloud and platform standards across all engineering squads.
• Salary*: $145,000 - $174,500

Our Values

Integrity, Innovation, Accountability, Resilience, Community.

Why join RapidRatings?

Here at RapidRatings we foster an environment where employees feel recognized for their contributions, appreciated for their individuality, and empowered to do their best. We know that bringing together employees with different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences sparks innovation, promotes better decision making and yields the creative problem solving that's critical to our long-term success. We offer an attractive benefits package with bonus, flexible work environment, unlimited PTO, and much more. With us, you are not just a number – we value people who are working hard and strive to make a real difference. Join our team to be a part of an industry-changing company and drive your career in the right direction.

RapidRatings International Inc. ("RapidRatings") is proud to be an equal opportunities employer.

We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

If you are interested in this role, please submit your CV in English. We will carefully consider your application during the initial screening and will make decisions based on your experiences and skills. We will contact you if your qualifications meet our requirements and are selected to continue for the next stage of the recruitment process. If you have a disability and need an adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please let us know on your CV.

Protecting your privacy and the security of your data is a top priority for RapidRatings. Please consult our Privacy Notice (https://www.rapidratings.com/privacy-policy) to know more about how we collect, use, and transfer the personal data of our candidates.

We wish you every success.