Director, Platform Engineering, Product Runtime

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose
Leads and manages the Product Runtime function within Platform Engineering, responsible for a significant portion of Early Warning’s first-party infrastructure supporting mission-critical services. This role defines and executes the strategy, development, and operation of core platform capabilities that enable secure, scalable, and highly available product experiences. Focuses on delivering reliable, compliant, and customer-centric platform services while ensuring effective resource management, operational excellence, and vendor stewardship.

Essential Functions

• Own the end-to-end strategy, delivery, and operation of Product Runtime platform services aligned to enterprise and product objectives.
• Lead, build, and develop high-performing engineering teams, including hiring, mentoring, performance management, and fostering a strong team culture.
• Drive execution across the full lifecycle of platform capabilities, including design, development, deployment, operations, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure high availability, performance, scalability, and security of critical infrastructure and platform services through measurable SLAs/SLOs and continuous monitoring.
• Partner cross-functionally with product, engineering, security, and infrastructure teams to align on roadmap, priorities, and outcomes.
• Drive business outcomes including platform adoption, reliability, security compliance, efficiency, and user satisfaction.
• Champion automation and modern engineering practices to improve provisioning, lifecycle management, and operational efficiency.
• Establish and promote best practices across system lifecycle management, including patching, upgrades, vulnerability management, and configuration management.
• Lead complex, high-visibility initiatives from concept through implementation, including planning, budgeting, and performance tracking.
• Foster a culture of operational excellence, security-first thinking, and customer focus.
• Support business continuity and disaster recovery planning and execution.
• Manage vendor relationships, contracts, and platform-related budgets, ensuring effective use of third-party services.
• Ensure adherence to company policies, regulatory requirements, and risk management practices to protect systems and data.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field.
• 8–10 years of leadership experience managing engineering teams delivering platform or infrastructure services.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders.
• Experience leading cross-functional initiatives involving engineering, product, security, and business stakeholders.
• Experience operating or supporting large-scale, customer-facing or mission-critical systems.
• Demonstrated ability to build, scale, and develop high-performing technical teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience owning and operating platform capabilities such as identity, authentication, authorization, secrets management, certificate management, or configuration management.
• Strong understanding of modern identity and security standards including TLS/mTLS, OAuth/OIDC, and related protocols.
• Familiarity with PKI, encryption, HSMs, x509 certificates, KMS, and code signing practices.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems including message queues, caching layers, CDNs, API gateways, load balancing, and job scheduling.
• Experience with large-scale cloud and hybrid infrastructure environments, including both VM-based and containerized platforms.
• Strong knowledge of SRE principles including SLAs, SLOs/SLIs, observability, alerting, and incident response.
• Experience operating in highly regulated environments with strong security and compliance requirements.
• Proven track record of defining and executing multi-year platform or infrastructure roadmaps.
• Experience managing vendor ecosystems and third-party technology dependencies.
• Background in automation, DevOps practices, infrastructure as code, and continuous delivery methodologies.
• Experience building self-service platforms and developer enablement capabilities.
• Demonstrated experience supporting high-scale production systems and resolving complex, high-visibility incidents.
• Relevant cloud or industry certifications are a plus.

Physical Requirements

Early Warning works together in a highly collaborative office environment. Working conditions consist of a normal office environment. Work is primarily sedentary and requires extensive use of a computer and involves sitting for periods of approximately four hours. Work may require occasional standing, walking, kneeling, and reaching. Must be able to lift 10 pounds occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently. Requires visual acuity and dexterity to view, prepare, and manipulate documents and office equipment including personal computers. Requires the ability to communicate with internal and/or external customers.

Employee must be able to perform essential functions and physical requirements of position with or without reasonable accommodation.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States at the date of hire.
 

The base pay scale for this position in:
Phoenix, AZ in USD per year is: $173,000 - $230,000.
San Francisco, CA in USD per year is: $207,000 - $276,000.
Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits.
This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness 

• Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.

• 401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.

• Paid Time Off – Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.

• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave

• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.