Director of Platform Engineering

Kadence Talent is partnered with a Seed-stage AI x Healthcare company in the Bay Area, looking to hire a Director of Platform Engineering. This is a 0-1 builder engineering role, where you will thrive being hands-on, but will have the leadership qualities to source and build a team of engineers underneith you.

You will own and scale the core platform powering AI-driven applications on large, complex datasets. This is a hands-on leadership role focused on building reliable, secure, and high-throughput systems in a production environment.

Title:
Director of Platform Engineering

Location:
Bay Area (hybrid)

Responsibilities

• Architect and operate cloud-native infrastructure (AWS) for data ingestion, processing, and serving
• Build and scale distributed systems and data pipelines
• Support deployment, monitoring, and evaluation of AI/ML systems
• Design integration layers (APIs, data pipelines) for external systems
• Own DevOps, CI/CD, observability, and infrastructure-as-code
• Embed security, compliance, and data integrity into system design
• Lead and grow a small, high-performing platform team

Requirements

• 8+ years engineering experience; 3+ years leading teams
• Strong background in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and data pipelines
• Hands-on experience building multi-tenant, high-performance platforms
• Experience with containers/orchestration
• Familiarity with production AI/ML systems (LLMs a plus)
• Track record building and scaling reliable systems in high-growth environments

Profile

Hands-on builder who can lead from the front, balancing speed, system quality, and long-term scalability

Compensation

Targeting $240k - $300k+, with competitive equity % available in addition