Lead Platform Engineer

Guardian Life Insurance • Holmdel Township, NJ

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

Guardian is seeking a Lead Platform Engineer to improve the engineering experience across the organization by identifying opportunities, partnering with engineering teams, and delivering reusable platform capabilities, solutions, and tooling. The role combines hands-on software engineering, technical leadership, and cross-functional collaboration to improve developer productivity, accelerate platform adoption, and reduce friction across the software development lifecycle. The engineer will work across initiatives and domains with Engineering Experience leadership, taking work from discovery through delivery and scaling engineering enablement across the organization.

The role involves designing and building reusable platform capabilities, services, APIs, integrations, tooling, and automation; leading assigned strategic initiatives through production delivery; and helping teams adopt new capabilities. The Lead Platform Engineer will contribute production-quality code, support operational readiness and adoption, communicate technical recommendations and project outcomes, mentor engineers, promote engineering standards, and improve tooling and developer workflows. The position requires working three days per week at a Guardian office in New York, NY; Holmdel, NJ; or Bethlehem, PA. No regular travel is required. The role reports to the Head of Engineering Experience and Platform, who reports to the Head of Engineering Enablement & Enterprise Architecture.

Requirements

• 7–10 years of professional software engineering experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated experience designing, building, and operating production software systems.
• Strong software development skills using technologies such as C#, TypeScript, Java, Python, Go, Kotlin, or similar languages.
• Experience building and supporting production services, APIs, integrations, and automation solutions.
• Proven ability to drive technical initiatives from requirements gathering through implementation and deployment.
• Experience collaborating across multiple engineering teams and organizational boundaries.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience creating technical documentation, implementation plans, and architectural designs.
• Experience working with globally distributed engineering teams.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to operate effectively in environments with evolving requirements and incomplete information.
• Ability to work three days a week at a Guardian office in New York, NY; Holmdel, NJ; or Bethlehem, PA.
• Legally authorized to work in the United States without requiring employment-based visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with developer experience, platform engineering, internal developer platforms, or engineering enablement initiatives.
• Experience with CI/CD platforms such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, or similar technologies.
• Experience with workflow orchestration platforms such as Temporal or similar technologies.
• Experience building integrations across enterprise platforms and services.
• Experience supporting adoption of engineering tools, frameworks, or organizational engineering practices.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted software development tools and engineering productivity solutions.
• Experience designing and implementing metrics, reporting, or engineering intelligence solutions.

Responsibilities

• Design and build reusable platform capabilities, services, APIs, integrations, tooling, and automation.
• Apply appropriate architectural patterns and modern engineering practices to deliver scalable, maintainable solutions.
• Contribute production-quality code and support solutions through deployment, operational readiness, and adoption.
• Improve developer workflows and platform usability through targeted technical solutions and reusable components.
• Lead assigned strategic engineering initiatives from approved scope through production delivery.
• Develop implementation plans, sequence work into achievable phases, and coordinate dependencies across teams.
• Partner with application, platform, architecture, and engineering teams to identify challenges and opportunities.
• Conduct discovery to clarify user needs, stakeholders, constraints, dependencies, and success criteria.
• Translate engineering and business needs into solution requirements and technical recommendations.
• Build alignment on priorities and gather feedback to shape solutions and future improvements.
• Present technical recommendations, designs, and implementation approaches to engineers and stakeholders.
• Create documentation, implementation guides, onboarding materials, and reusable engineering patterns.
• Facilitate technical discussions and help teams navigate adoption of new capabilities.
• Communicate project status, risks, decisions, and outcomes in synchronous and asynchronous environments.
• Share lessons learned, best practices, and reusable approaches across teams.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and technical discussions.
• Promote engineering standards, best practices, and reusable patterns.
• Help establish scalable approaches for platform adoption and engineering enablement.
• Contribute to continuous improvement of engineering processes, tooling, and developer workflows.
• Support operational excellence through reliability, observability, documentation, and maintainability practices.

Benefits

• The company describes skill-building, leadership development, and philanthropic opportunities to support professional and personal goals and career growth.
• The position may be eligible for annual, sales, or other incentive compensation in addition to salary.
• Guardian offers benefits and resources to full-time eligible employees; specific benefits are listed on the company benefits website.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior