Senior Manager - Platform Engineering

Senior Engineering Manager, Platform Engineering

Location: Buffalo, NY or Wilmington, DE
Department: Technology

Overview

We are seeking a Director of Platform Engineering to lead the strategy, development, and delivery of the platforms and capabilities that power modern software engineering across the enterprise. This leader will build and mature the internal capabilities that enables teams to ship software that is secure, reliable, scalable, and fully automated across cloud and on‑premise environments

The Director will guide the organization’s adoption of CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, container platforms, observability, governance automation, and self‑service delivery models, reducing cognitive load for product engineering teams and accelerating time‑to-value. This role requires close partnership with Architecture, Cybersecurity, Cloud & Infrastructure Ops, Business Technology, Compliance, and Product Engineering to ensure platform capabilities align with business goals, modern engineering practices, and enterprise standards.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on strategic thinker with deep experience modernizing engineering ecosystems, building high‑performing teams, and driving adoption of scalable platform capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

Platform Strategy & Vision

• Define and own the platform engineering strategy, roadmap, and long‑term vision aligned to organizational and technology goals.

• Establish and evolve the internal developer offerings, including golden paths, paved-road standards, and self‑service capabilities.

Platform Engineering Execution

• Lead development and operation of core platform components including:

  • CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation

  • Infrastructure as Code frameworks

  • Cloud and hybrid infrastructure foundations

  • Container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes)

  • Observability and monitoring toolchains

  • Secret management, configuration management, and policy‑as‑code

• Ensure platforms are secure, resilient, scalable, and optimized for developer experience.

Enablement of Modern Engineering Practices

• Champion DevOps, SRE, and automation-first approaches across engineering teams.

• Reduce delivery friction by standardizing reusable patterns, templates, reference architectures, and automated deployment workflows.

• Promote a You Build It, You Own It culture through platforms that simplify operational ownership for teams.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Collaborate closely with Architecture, Cybersecurity, and Cloud/Infrastructure Ops to ensure platforms adhere to enterprise architecture, security, and compliance frameworks.

• Partner with product and application engineering teams to drive adoption, gather feedback, prioritize enhancements, and scale successful patterns.

• Interface with senior business and technology leaders to communicate platform strategy, progress, and outcomes.

Operational Excellence

• Implement and oversee reliability engineering practices including SLOs/SLIs, incident management, error budgets, and proactive quality measures.

• Ensure effective monitoring, alerting, logging, and operational automation are embedded into platform capabilities.

• Drive continuous improvement through data-driven insights, including developer experience KPIs and delivery performance metrics.

Leadership & Talent Development

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing platform engineering organization composed of managers, team leads, and senior engineers.

• Drive a team culture of innovation, accountability, inclusion, and continuous learning.

• Manage budget, staffing plans, vendor partnerships, and resource allocation for platform initiatives.

Supervisory / Managerial Responsibilities

• Typically manages 20–50 team members through direct and indirect reports.

• Responsible for performance management, talent development, staffing, and organizational design.

Required Qualifications

• A combined minimum of 14 years’ higher education and/or work experience, including 10 years of experience in engineering, platform/cloud engineering, DevOps, or infrastructure roles

• A minimum of 5 years experience leading engineering teams, including people management

• Strong technical expertise across:

  • Cloud environments (Azure, AWS, or GCP)

  • CI/CD tools (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, etc.)

  • Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Bicep, CloudFormation)

  • Kubernetes or similar container orchestration platforms

  • Monitoring/observability solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, Splunk, etc.)

• Demonstrated ability to lead modernization initiatives and drive adoption of new engineering practices

• Strong executive communication, strategic thinking, decision making and cross‑functional influence
   

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in a technical or business-related discipline

• Experience leading platform engineering in large-scale or regulated environments

• Background implementing FinOps practices and optimizing cloud cost models

• Working knowledge of SRE frameworks and operational excellence programs

• Experience with service mesh, API gateways, developer portals, or IDP frameworks (Backstage, Tanzu, etc.)

• Confidence in leading multiple teams often in different geographic locations and time zones