Director of AI Platform Engineering

Director of AI Platform Engineering📍 Location: Springfield, MA, US🏢 Industry: Financial Services💼 Work Setting: HybridAre you passionate about building the platforms that power enterprise AI innovation, leading high-performing engineering teams, and driving cloud-native infrastructure at scale? We are seeking an experienced Director of AI Platform Engineering to lead the development, execution, and growth of a team responsible for delivering the foundational infrastructure, services, and tooling that enable AI development across the organization.In this role, you will combine strong people leadership with technical expertise, guiding the strategy and delivery of AI platform capabilities while fostering a culture of engineering excellence, collaboration, and innovation. You will work closely with AI, product, cloud, and engineering leaders to build scalable, reliable, and secure platforms that accelerate AI adoption and business impact.Key ResponsibilitiesEngineering Leadership & Team DevelopmentLead, hire, mentor, and develop a team of AI platform engineers, fostering a high-performing and high-trust engineering culture.Oversee onboarding, performance management, career development, and succession planning activities.Create an environment that promotes collaboration, innovation, continuous learning, and engineering excellence.Remove organizational barriers and empower teams to deliver impactful platform solutions.AI Platform Strategy & Roadmap ExecutionDrive delivery against the AI Platform roadmap by translating strategic objectives into executable initiatives, milestones, and release plans.Collaborate with business, product, AI, and technical stakeholders to prioritize platform investments and align resources.Ensure successful execution of complex, multi-phase platform initiatives from concept to production.Manage risks, dependencies, timelines, and delivery outcomes across multiple workstreams.Technical Leadership & ArchitectureParticipate in architectural reviews, design discussions, and technical decision-making for AI platform infrastructure and services.Guide the development of scalable systems supporting model deployment, inference, orchestration, observability, and AI operations.Provide technical direction on cloud-native platforms, distributed systems, developer tooling, and AI infrastructure.Influence long-term platform architecture and technology strategy.Platform Engineering & Developer ExperienceChampion the creation of platform capabilities that improve developer productivity and accelerate AI solution delivery.Support the design and enhancement of internal developer platforms, automation frameworks, and self-service engineering tools.Drive improvements in developer experience, operational efficiency, and platform usability.Encourage adoption of engineering best practices across teams.Operational Excellence & ReliabilityEstablish and uphold standards for software quality, platform reliability, operational readiness, and supportability.Promote disciplined engineering practices including code reviews, documentation, testing, monitoring, incident management, and on-call readiness.Drive reliability, scalability, security, and performance improvements across platform services.Ensure operational maturity through metrics, observability, and continuous improvement initiatives.Stakeholder Management & Executive CommunicationCommunicate platform progress, priorities, risks, and resource needs to leadership and executive stakeholders.Translate complex technical topics into business-relevant insights and recommendations.Build strong partnerships across engineering, AI, cloud, infrastructure, security, and product organizations.Facilitate alignment between strategic business goals and technical execution.AI Infrastructure & InnovationSupport the development of AI and machine learning infrastructure, including model serving, inference platforms, and AI workflow orchestration.Collaborate on AI governance, model lifecycle management, evaluation frameworks, and responsible AI initiatives.Evaluate emerging technologies and drive innovation that enhances platform capabilities and organizational AI maturity.Contribute to long-term AI platform strategy and roadmap planning.Required QualificationsBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical discipline.3+ years of experience leading software engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or related technical teams.5+ years of hands-on software engineering, cloud engineering, infrastructure, or platform development experience.Proven experience hiring, coaching, mentoring, and retaining high-performing engineering talent.Strong track record delivering complex, large-scale platform initiatives from concept through production deployment.Working knowledge of cloud-native architectures and modern infrastructure platforms.Experience with Kubernetes, container orchestration, networking, multi-tenant architectures, and public cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).Exposure to AI/ML infrastructure, model serving, inference platforms, LLM integrations, or agentic AI solutions.Experience establishing engineering standards, operational excellence practices, and quality frameworks.Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and leadership skills.Preferred QualificationsExperience building or leading Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs).Understanding of AI safety, governance, model evaluation, and responsible AI frameworks.Experience supporting large-scale AI, machine learning, or generative AI platforms.Ability to influence architecture decisions while maintaining strong people leadership.Open-source contributions related to platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, AI, or machine learning technologies.Master's degree or other advanced technical qualification.Key SkillsEngineering LeadershipAI Platform EngineeringPlatform ArchitectureCloud-Native InfrastructureKubernetesAWS, Azure, or GCPAI/ML InfrastructureModel Serving & Inference PlatformsDeveloper ExperienceInternal Developer Platforms (IDP)Distributed SystemsPlatform Reliability & OperationsTechnical StrategyTeam Building & Talent DevelopmentStakeholder ManagementOperational ExcellenceAI Governance & SecurityAgile Delivery