Job Description

What you’ll do

• Lead and grow multiple Platform Engineering teams, providing clear direction, coaching, and career development for a team of engineers.

• Set expectations, give regular feedback, and manage performance to build a high-performing, inclusive, and accountable team.

• Partner with Staff/Principal Engineers to guide technical and architectural decisions for platform services, focusing on scalability, reliability, and security rather than day-to-day coding.

• Own end-to-end delivery for the Platform teams – from planning and prioritization through execution, rollout, and ongoing improvement.

• Drive adoption of engineering best practices (API-first design, TDD, BDD, GitOps, observability) across your teams.

• Collaborate closely with Product Management, Security, and other engineering leaders to align platform roadmaps with business and customer needs.

• Proactively identify risks, remove blockers, and ensure your POD consistently meets agreed SLAs/SLOs and quality standards.

• Role-model Guidewire’s culture of curiosity, continuous improvement, and responsible use of AI, encouraging your team to leverage AI and automation to improve productivity and outcomes.

What you’ll bring

• Demonstrated ability to embrace AI and apply it to your role, using data-driven insights to drive innovation, productivity, and continuous improvement.

• 15+ years of software development experience, with a strong background in building SaaS and/or PaaS products at a product company.

• Significant experience in people management (typically 6–8+ years), including hiring, performance management, coaching, and career development of software engineers.

• Proven experience leading an entire Platform Engineering POD or equivalent cross-functional platform team, accountable for reliability, scalability, and developer experience.

• Earlier-career hands-on programming experience in JavaGo/Python, and still comfortable reviewing code, discussing design trade-offs, and challenging technical proposals.

• Deep understanding of SaaS architectures on public cloud (preferably AWS), including multi-tenant, highly available, and secure systems.

• Strong experience with CI/CD and platform tooling, such as Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, OpenShift, and modern Git-based pipelines.

• Solid understanding of system design and distributed systems, including resilience, observability, and cost-efficiency considerations.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence and build trust with engineers, peers, and senior stakeholders.

• A calm, pragmatic leadership style under pressure, with a strong bias for action and continuous improvement.