VP of Platform Engineering & AI Infrastructure

Happen Bank; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 290,000; Full time

Job summary

Happen Bank seeks a VP, Platform Engineering in San Francisco to lead AI infrastructure, DevOps, testing, DBA, and observability. You will define multi‑year strategy, build a high‑performing organization, and ensure secure, scalable production platforms across the enterprise.

You will partner with Technology and Product to align platform investments with AI modernization, drive governance, and enable rapid, safe delivery. Strong executive presence required.

Qualifications

• 13+ years of progressive software engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, or related technology experience
• 10+ years in a senior engineering leadership role leading multiple technical domains and managers of managers
• Demonstrated experience setting AI Infrastructure strategy, including evaluating AI/LLM models and platforms
• Deep technical fluency across DevOps pipelines, testing, API design, database architecture, and observability
• Track record of building observability practices, SLA/SLO frameworks, and incident management at scale
• Experience leading or partnering with Database Administration functions
• Experience building enterprise testing strategies with automation and AI-enabled testing
• Experience building platforms and shared services across modern distributed environments (Java/Scala/Node.js; Postgres/MySQL/Cassandra/DynamoDB; SQS/SNS or Kafka)
• Strong executive presence and cross-functional influence to align platform investments with strategy
• Proven success developing leaders and leadership bench strength across complex engineering orgs
• Embedding AI capabilities into strategy and delivery with secure, maintainable production systems

Responsibilities

• Own the AI Infrastructure vision, strategy, and roadmap; evaluate models and platforms for in-house vs. service options
• Lead client-facing AI gateways and tooling enabling product teams to safely add AI features
• Define standards for governance, cost, latency, security, safety, and scalability
• Define CI/CD strategy, developer tooling, IaC, automated deployment, and environment management
• Own build and release roadmap and scale tooling with headcount and product scope
• Establish change management guardrails, release controls, testing standards, and rollback plans
• Use incident data to improve delivery and change management practices
• Own enterprise testing strategy and shared testing capabilities across teams
• Define quality standards, SLAs, and release-readiness criteria
• Advance AI-enabled testing, automation, self-healing tests, and AI-assisted generation
• Lead DBA function with performance tuning, schema guidance, capacity planning, data reliability
• Own incident management & observability framework with SLAs/SLOs and real-time health visibility
• Build leadership bench strength across AI Infra, DevOps, Testing, DBA, Observability
• Represent Platform Engineering in enterprise tech strategy and investment decisions
• Drive security, governance, data integrity, and responsible production deployment

Skills

Platform engineering

AI infrastructure

DevOps

Observability

SRE practices

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher

Tools

Java

Scala

Node.js

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Kafka

Job description

Happen Bank seeks a VP, Platform Engineering in San Francisco to lead AI infrastructure, DevOps, testing, DBA, and observability. You will define multi‑year strategy, build a high‑performing organization, and ensure secure, scalable production platforms across the enterprise.

You will partner with Technology and Product to align platform investments with AI modernization, drive governance, and enable rapid, safe delivery. Strong executive presence required.