Director Of Platform Engineering

StarCompliance

63d

About The Position

StarCompliance is on a mission to make compliance simple and easy. Trusted globally by enterprise financial institutions, the user-friendly STAR platform empowers organizations to achieve regulatory compliance while safeguarding their integrity and business reputations. Through a customizable, 360-degree view of employee activity, the STAR software enables firms to automate the detection and resolution of potential areas of conflict while streamlining daily workflows and increasing efficiency. The Director of Platform Engineering will establish and lead StarComplianceâs new Platform Engineering function, unifying SRE and DevOps capabilities currently spread across multiple teams. This role combines strategic ownership with hands-on technical contribution, building a high-performing team responsible for the platform foundations that enable fast, reliable, and secure software delivery across our SaaS products. Reporting to the VP of Engineering, you will define and mature Starâs internal engineering platform - standardized CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, observability, operational tooling, reliability practices, and developer experience. You will hire, mentor, and grow a team of Platform Engineers while actively contributing to design discussions, automation work, and complex technical problem-solving. You will partner closely with the Architecture team to translate cloud and platform strategy into executable engineering capabilities and collaborate with SecOps to ensure secure-by-design practices are built into pipelines and platform tooling. Your work will reduce cognitive load for product teams, improve reliability and release velocity, and support Starâs transition toward a fully modern, cloud-native PaaS/SaaS delivery model. Success in this role means building a cohesive Platform Engineering organization, establishing a unified platform used across all engineering teams, and delivering measurable improvements in reliability, scalability, and delivery efficiency - while remaining hands-on and deeply engaged in the technical evolution of Starâs software platform.

Requirements

Proven experience leading and developing high-performing SRE, DevOps, or Platform Engineering teams within a SaaS or cloud-native environment.
Experience hiring, structuring, and scaling an engineering function from the ground up.
Strong interpersonal and communication skills, capable of influencing architecture, product, engineering, and executive stakeholders.
Deep expertise in designing and operating CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps (preferred) or equivalent tooling such as GitHub Actions or GitLab.
Strong understanding of cloud-native hybrid architectures including single and multi-tenancy, PaaS services, infrastructure automation, and scalable deployment practices.
Hands-on engineering experience in at least one enterprise-grade programming language (C#, Java, Python) and the ability to contribute directly when required.
Experience with observability platforms, SRE practices, telemetry pipelines, dashboards, and alerting systems.
Significant experience in Azure or another major cloud provider, with strong knowledge of modern cloud services, identity, networking fundamentals, and environment configuration.
Experience building internal developer platforms, platform tooling, or standardised release frameworks across multiple product teams.
Strong understanding of modern DevOps and SRE principles, including incident response, post-mortems, automation, SLIs/SLOs, and resilience engineering.
Familiarity with secure-by-design engineering practices and integrating security controls into CI/CD and cloud platform workflows.
Ability to work effectively with SecOps teams without direct ownership of security operations.
Demonstrated experience leading complex cloud, platform, or modernisation initiatives in a fast-paced SaaS environment.
Ability to evaluate requirements, recommend pragmatic solutions, and drive cross-team outcomes.
Strong analytical, diagnostic, and troubleshooting skills, with a bias for automation and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

Establish, hire, and lead StarComplianceâs new Platform Engineering function, bringing together SRE and DevOps capabilities currently distributed across engineering teams.
Coach, mentor, and develop Platform Engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, autonomy, and continuous learning in alignment with âThe StarCompliance Way.â
Define and communicate the vision for a modern, cloud-native engineering platform that increases velocity, reliability, and consistency across all product teams.
Lead the design, build, and governance of standardized CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps, ensuring secure, repeatable, and scalable software delivery across our SaaS platform.
Define release orchestration patterns, including automated gating, zero-downtime deployments, rollback processes, and environment promotion workflows.
Embed test automation, SRE practices, and telemetry into pipelines to improve delivery confidence and operational reliability.
Partner with the Architecture team to evolve Starâs cloud platform, ensuring alignment on patterns, standards, and long-term technical strategy.
Translate architectural direction into executable platform capabilities, tooling, automation, and operational processes.
Work closely with Engineering squads to ensure platform services meet developer needs while reducing cognitive load and removing delivery bottlenecks.
Define and implement SRE practices such as SLIs/SLOs, performance baselines, incident response processes, and error budgets.
Oversee modern observability tooling, ensuring rich telemetry, dashboards, alerting, and actionable insights that improve product reliability.
Drive continuous improvement through post-incident reviews, resilience engineering, and proactive identification of risks in production systems.
Lead the adoption and evolution of Azure cloud services, PaaS components, and infrastructure automation aligned to Starâs SaaS platform roadmap.
Establish patterns and templates that ensure secure-by-design delivery, working closely with SecOps to embed security controls into the platform.
Champion automation-first principles across infrastructure, environments, and operational workflows.
Remain actively involved in hands-on engineering where appropriate - reviewing code, contributing to automation, prototyping solutions, and supporting critical incidents.
Drive the adoption of AI-enabled engineering practices to increase developer productivity, improve reliability, and accelerate delivery.