Platform Engineering Manager

Onward Legal Innovation; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 230,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work with flexible remote

Job summary

Onward Legal Innovation is seeking a Platform Engineering Manager in New York City or Washington, D.C., to lead a lean platform team. The role blends people leadership with hands-on work across AI infrastructure, cloud platforms, Kubernetes, IaC, CI/CD and developer tooling.

You will shape enterprise-scale AI deployments, partner with vendors, and drive platform reliability and security while keeping a lean, technically strong team.

Qualifications

• 12+ years across Platform Engineering, DevOps, SRE or Software Engineering, incl. 4+ years leading engineers.
• Strong hands-on engineering capability; not purely managerial.
• Experience building and operating cloud platforms or internal developer platforms at scale.
• Coding capability with Python and/or Go.
• Strong experience with AWS and/or Azure, Kubernetes and Docker.
• Hands-on experience with Terraform, Ansible, Helm, GitOps, Argo CD, Flux or similar.
• Strong CI/CD experience with GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, GitLab CI or Jenkins.
• Strong understanding of AI application and inference infrastructure.
• Experience with Amazon Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic or comparable AI platforms.
• Exposure to RAG, AI agents, MCP, model gateways, retrieval, evaluation frameworks and AI observability.
• Understanding of AI platform challenges including model reliability, latency, cost, security, prompt injection, data protection and provider resilience.
• Experience building developer tooling, APIs, SDKs and self-service capabilities.
• Strong knowledge of observability, SRE, platform reliability and security.
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity in transformation environments.
• Experience working with vendors and strategic technology partners.
• Desirable background in a large global enterprise, professional services, financial services or consultancy.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead a small, highly capable Platform Engineering team.
• Shape the platform infrastructure supporting AI and GenAI applications.
• Establish standards for AI deployment, model access, RAG, agent orchestration, evaluation, observability and security.
• Engineer resilient AI platforms addressing outages, quality changes, latency, cost and security risks.
• Remain hands-on with engineering, architecture, code and IaC.
• Own the platform engineering roadmap, technical direction and delivery.
• Design and evolve cloud, Kubernetes, CI/CD and developer platform capabilities.
• Build reusable tooling and services to boost developer productivity.
• Review code, contribute to technical design, and make hands-on architectural decisions.
• Establish engineering standards across CI/CD, IaC, GitOps, cloud and Kubernetes.
• Own platform reliability, SLOs, incident management and operational maturity.
• Collaborate with engineering teams, security, stakeholders and strategic vendors.
• Coach engineers while continuing to contribute technically.

Skills

Platform Engineering

DevOps

SRE

Python

Go

AWS

Azure

Kubernetes

Docker

Terraform

Ansible

GitOps

CI/CD

Observability

Security

Leadership

Ambiguity Handling

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Helm

GitOps

Argo CD

Flux

GitHub Actions

Azure DevOps

GitLab CI

Job description

Platform Engineering Manager - AI / Cloud | New York City or Washington, D.C.

Platform Engineering Manager is required to build and lead a new, lean platform engineering team for one of the world’s largest and most prestigious law firms, as it undertakes a major technology, platform and AI transformation.

Location: New York City or Washington, D.C. Hybrid with excellent remote working flexibility. You must live within approximately one hour of Grand Central NYC or central Washington, D.C.

Candidates must already be eligible to work in the US. No H-1B transfers or new visa sponsorship.

Compensation: $230k-$300k base + benefits + bonus

This is a genuine player/coach role combining people leadership with strong hands-on engineering across AI application infrastructure, cloud platforms, Kubernetes, Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD and developer tooling.

You’ll help shape the platform engineering capabilities required to support the firm’s next generation of AI applications, including Amazon Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, RAG, model gateways, AI agents, MCP, AI evaluation and GenAI observability, while also building the internal developer platform used across the wider engineering organisation.

You’ll need to be comfortable working with ambiguity, building new capabilities from the ground up and collaborating with internal teams, senior stakeholders, vendors and strategic technology partners, while operating across mission-critical enterprise systems within a regulated environment.

Key skills required for the Platform Engineering Manager

• 12+ years across Platform Engineering, DevOps, SRE or Software Engineering, including 4+ years leading engineers.
• Strong hands-on engineering capability. This is not a purely managerial role.
• Previous experience building and operating cloud platforms, internal developer platforms or large-scale DevOps/SRE environments.
• Coding capability with Python and/or Go.
• Strong experience with AWS and/or Azure, Kubernetes and Docker.
• Hands-on experience with Terraform, Ansible, Helm, GitOps, Argo CD, Flux or similar technologies.
• Strong CI/CD experience with GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, GitLab CI or Jenkins.
• Strong understanding of modern AI application and inference infrastructure.
• Experience with Amazon Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic or comparable AI platforms.
• Exposure to RAG, AI agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP), model gateways, retrieval, evaluation frameworks and AI observability.
• Understanding of AI platform challenges including model reliability, latency, cost, security, prompt injection, data protection and provider resilience.
• Experience building developer tooling, reusable services, APIs, SDKs and self-service capabilities.
• Strong knowledge of observability, SRE, platform reliability and security.
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity and evolving requirements in a transformation environment.
• Strong experience working with vendors and strategic technology partners.
• A background in a large global enterprise, professional services, financial services or consultancy is desirable.

What you’ll do as a Platform Engineering Manager

• Build and lead a small, highly capable Platform Engineering team.
• Shape the platform infrastructure supporting AI and GenAI applications across the organisation.
• Establish standards for AI deployment, model access, RAG, agent orchestration, evaluation, observability and security.
• Help engineer resilient AI platforms that account for provider outages, model quality changes, latency, cost and security risks.
• Remain hands-on with engineering, architecture, code and Infrastructure as Code.
• Own the platform engineering roadmap, technical direction and delivery.
• Design and evolve cloud, Kubernetes, CI/CD and developer platform capabilities.
• Build reusable tooling and services that improve developer productivity and engineering velocity.
• Review code, contribute to technical design and make hands-on architectural decisions.
• Establish engineering standards across CI/CD, IaC, GitOps, cloud and Kubernetes.
• Own platform reliability, SLOs, incident management and operational maturity.
• Work closely with engineering teams, security, senior stakeholders and strategic vendors.
• Coach and develop engineers while continuing to contribute technically.

Why this role?

This is an opportunity to join a globally recognised organisation at an early stage of a significant platform engineering and AI transformation.

You’ll help define how AI applications are built, deployed, governed and operated at enterprise scale, while also shaping the internal developer platform and broader engineering standards.

The team will remain lean and technically strong, so this role offers considerably more hands-on involvement than a traditional management position.

You’ll work across AI infrastructure, AWS/Azure, Kubernetes, Infrastructure as Code, developer experience, observability and security, helping create the engineering foundation for the organisation’s next generation of applications and AI capabilities.

It’s particularly suited to a Platform Engineering Manager who still enjoys building, coding, solving complex technical problems and bringing structure to ambiguity.