Lead Platform Engineer

Gates Foundation; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision coverage

Paid time off

Paid family leave

Retirement contribution

Regional holidays

Employee communities

Job summary

Gates Foundation seeks a Lead Platform Engineer to architect, deliver and evolve complex data and AI platforms that support global staff. You will provide technical leadership, own solution strategy, and mentor engineers to advance data governance, security, and enterprise capabilities.

You will partner with IT and business teams to translate needs into scalable, secure, and cost‑effective technology solutions, guiding cross‑team initiatives and elevating engineering standards across the

Qualifications

• 12+ years in data platforms and AI/ML infrastructure.
• Experience with Databricks and Azure.
• Docker/Kubernetes experience.
• Knowledge of data governance and security.
• Experience building API-driven platforms.
• Experience with CI/CD and IaC.
• Experience with health and life sciences data is mentioned.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership across multiple platforms and domains.
• Shape solution strategy and guide engineering excellence.
• Mentor engineers and build team capability.
• Oversee architecture reviews and ensure security and reliability.
• Lead cross‑functional design discussions and trade‑offs.
• Drive automation, governance and observability improvements.

Skills

Platform leadership

System architecture

Data platforms

AI/ML infrastructure

DevSecOps

Cloud security

Stakeholder communication

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS

Tools

Databricks

Azure

Snowflake

Kubernetes

Terraform

REST/GraphQL

Job description

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

Within Business Operations and the Information Technology (IT) organization, the Enterprise Data Solutions (EDS) team leads work across Knowledge Management, AI, Data Engineering, Business Intelligence, Data Infrastructure, and Health Data Platforms. The team’s vision is to empower the Foundation with innovative, data and AI driven services and solutions that enable timely, informed decision-making.

As part of this scope, the EDS team recently launched the Enterprise Data Platform (EDP) - the central hub for managing, analyzing, and sharing the Foundation’s data assets and enabling AI.

Your Role

As a Lead Platform Engineer, you are an experienced, hands‑on technical leader responsible for architecting, delivering, and evolving complex technology solutions that support foundation and affiliate staff around the world. You operate with a high degree of independence, serving as a subject matter expert and acting as a practice lead who contributes to technical execution, builds team capability and mentors engineers. You translate complex organizational and technical problems into actionable, tactical plans, partnering across service teams and being accountable for outcomes—not just deliverables.

In this role, you provide technical leadership across multiple platforms and domains, shape solution strategy, contribute to technical execution and guide engineering excellence across the organization. You serve as a trusted advisor to IT leadership and business partners, helping translate long‑term organizational needs into scalable, secure, sustainable technology capabilities. You influence architectural direction, coach engineering teams, and ensure the overall health, usability, and reliability of the systems entrusted to your stewardship. Your work directly strengthens the foundation’s ability to operate effectively and advance its mission globally.

What You’ll Do

Technology & Architecture Leadership

• Define and evolve multi‑year Data and AI platform roadmaps aligned to enterprise architecture, security standards, and business strategies.
• Work with business leaders globally to understand business needs, translate requirements to meaningful design artifacts and implement data and AI tooling for Enterprise Data Platform (EDP).
• Implement Data and AI governance controls, data and platform level security best practices as we continue to build out EDP.
• Provide platform architectural leadership and hands‑on development of frameworks (example: Data Classification, data auditing, etc.) on complex, cross‑team initiatives, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, resilient, and maintainable.
• Lead platform tools, frameworks and vendor evaluations, guiding build vs. buy decisions and ensuring alignment with enterprise technical direction.
• Develop and promote engineering standards, reference architectures, and data access design patterns used across IT and partner teams.
• Anticipate technology impacts across applications, data, integrations, and infrastructure—and guide teams through informed trade‑off decisions including assessing new technology.

Solution Delivery & Continuous Improvement

• Develop design patterns for developing and governing data and agentic AI applications on EDP using Databricks foundation models, OpenAI, Claude, Snowflake Cortex etc.
• Manage and drive improvements of a lightweight custom application (Data Portal) for self‑service data cataloging, search and discovery and data sharing with internal and external users.
• Day‑to‑day hands‑on execution and implementation of solutions, initiatives, processes and practices.
• Lead and oversee technical direction for large multi‑team delivery efforts, ensuring application of modern engineering and DevSecOps practices through completion.
• Conduct architectural and technical reviews of solution designs, code, and delivery approaches to raise quality and consistency.
• Champion automation, governance, observability, and operational excellence to ensure platforms remain reliable, performant, and cost effective.
• Pilot emerging technologies and guide their adoption into stable enterprise capabilities when appropriate.
• Drive continuous improvement of engineering practices, tooling, automation and operational processes.

Service & Portfolio Strategy

• Partner with service managers and product owners to shape service strategies, roadmaps, and investment priorities.
• Translate complex system challenges into actionable plans that improve sustainability, lifecycle health, and user experience.
• Provide senior‑level input to annual planning, including resource needs, modernization opportunities, risks, and capacity considerations.
• Represent technology perspectives in strategic and portfolio discussions, ensuring alignment between business direction and technical capability.

Leadership, Influence & Collaboration

• Serve as a practice lead, SME and senior mentor; coach engineers and contingent staff, as well as manage service partners.
• Build strong, collaborative relationships across IT, Business Operations, and programmatic teams.
• Lead cross‑functional architecture and design discussions, guiding teams through ambiguity with clarity, sound judgment, and tactical planning.
• Communicate effectively across technical and non‑technical audiences, including senior leadership, translating complex concepts into clear implications and recommendations.
• Represent IT in foundation working groups, governance forums, and cross‑team initiatives, ensuring alignment with broader strategies and priorities.
• Lead core initiatives partnering across PSTs, Ops and IT.

Your Experience

• Bachelor’s or master’s in computer science or related field or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years’ experience in data platforms with a focus on advanced analytics, AI/ML Infrastructure, data security and automation.
• Experience in implementing managed and custom MCP servers.
• Experience in working on data platform architecture, processing of unstructured data and extracting insights.
• Experience with analyzing and extracting insights from health and life sciences data (internal and external public repositories) using analytical and reporting tools.
• Experienced in working with business users and co‑developing solutions on EDP using Databricks, Azure and governing AI applications.
• Hands‑on experience with:
  • Azure (Data Lake, Azure ML, Event Hubs, etc.)
  • IaC automating infrastructure provisioning using Terraform
  • Databricks experience is a must (Lakeflow, Spark, Delta Lake, Databricks Applications, Unity Catalog)
  • Snowflake (Iceberg, Horizon catalog, Cortex AI, secure data sharing)
• Experience designing and building API‑driven data platforms (REST/GraphQL, microservices), and API/AI gateways.
• Experience with data sharing with internal and external users, cataloging external data platforms is preferred.
• Familiarity with building data pipelines with Databricks and DBT Cloud and orchestration.
• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and distributed systems.

Additional Qualifications

Strong understanding of:

• RAG architectures, embeddings, and vector databases.
• Document chunking, indexing, and retrieval strategies.
• Experience with document processing/NLP pipelines (OCR, entity extraction, classification).
• Collibra data catalog and Data Governance.
• Deep expertise with cloud‑based infrastructure (Azure preferred), networking, identity, security, automation, and cost optimization.
• Advanced experience with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, cloud‑native operational models, and modern version control strategies.
• Proficiency with programming and scripting languages such as C# .Net, Python, or PowerShell is desirable.
• Previous experience with Salesforce would be a plus.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills.
• Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located.

The Foundation does not provide immigration‑related sponsorship for this role. This includes direct company sponsorship and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (eg: H‑1B, O‑1, L‑1, E, OPT, STEM‑OPT, CPT, TN, J‑1, etc.).

The salary range for this role is $190,100 to $294,700 USD. We recognize high‑wage market differences in Seattle and Washington D.C., where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $209,100 to $324,100 USD. As a mission‑driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hires salaries are typically between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate’s job‑related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

We’re committed to providing an inclusive and accessible hiring experience for all candidates. If you have a disability or medical condition and need an accommodation at any stage of the application or interview process—such as an ASL interpreter, alternative interview format, or physical accessibility support—we’re happy to help. Please contact [e-mail] with the position number and a brief description of your accommodation needs. Requests will be handled confidentially.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.