Senior Platform Engineer
About The Position
The Foundation is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to help architect and scale a world-class data and AI ecosystem that powers breakthrough work across global health, global development, education, gender equality, and humanitarian response. This is a unique opportunity for a highly skilled Platform Engineer with deep expertise in Databricks, Microsoft Azure, and AI technologies to shape the future of how data and intelligence drive global impact. In this role, you will lead the design and evolution of a modern, enterprise-scale platform built on Azure, Databricks, and Snowflake, enabling advanced analytics, machine learning, and cutting-edge generative AI capabilities. You will help transform vast amounts of structured and unstructured data—including research reports, program documents, survey results, and field data—into actionable insights that accelerate decision-making and innovation. You will work at the forefront of AI, leveraging technologies such as Azure OpenAI, Claude, Azure AI Search, and intelligent data services to build secure, scalable, and responsible AI solutions. Your expertise in Databricks and cloud-native engineering will be critical in creating high-performance data pipelines, AI-ready architectures, and API-driven platforms that empower teams across the foundation. Beyond technology, you'll play a key role in establishing trusted, governed, and ethical AI systems, ensuring compliance with global data governance standards through platforms such as Collibra.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s or master’s in computer science or related field or equivalent experience
- 8+ years’ experience in data platforms with a focus on advanced analytics, AI/ML Infrastructure, data security and automation
- Experience with analyzing and extracting insights from health and life sciences data (internal and external public repositories) using analytical and reporting tools
- Manage and drive improvements of a lightweight custom application (Data Portal) for self-service data cataloging, search and discovery
- Hands-on experience with: Azure (Data Lake, Azure ML, Event Hubs, etc.)
- IaC automating infrastructure provisioning using Terraform
- Databricks (Lakeflow, Spark, Delta Lake, workflows, Unity Catalog)
- Snowflake (Iceberg, Horizon catalog, Cortex AI, secure data sharing)
- Experience designing and building API-driven data platforms (REST/GraphQL, microservices)
- Experience working with unstructured data processing
- Familiarity with building data pipelines with Databricks and DBT Cloud and orchestration
- Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and distributed systems
- Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located.
- The Foundation does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. This includes direct company sponsorship and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (eg: H-1B, O-1, L-1, E, OPT, STEM-OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.).
- As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Nice To Haves
- Strong understanding of: RAG architectures, embeddings, and vector databases
- Document chunking, indexing, and retrieval strategies
- Previous experience with Salesforce would be a plus
- Experience with document processing/NLP pipelines (OCR, entity extraction, classification)
- Collibra and Data Governance
Responsibilities
- Lead the architecture and development of a cloud-native Data and AI platform on Azure, Databricks Lakehouse and Snowflake
- Design and implement API-first data platform to enable secure, governed data sharing across teams, partners, and global stakeholders
- Operationalize GenAI solutions for knowledge discovery and decision support, including: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures, Integration with OpenAI and Claude APIs, Semantic and hybrid search using Azure AI Search
- Create design patterns for document ingestion, parsing, OCR, metadata extraction, and enrichment
- Design and implement embedding and vector search strategies for unstructured data
- Lead the implementation of data governance and stewardship practices using Collibra, including: Data cataloging, lineage, and metadata management, Data quality frameworks and stewardship workflows, Alignment with global privacy, security, and compliance standards
- Establish secure data access patterns (RBAC/ABAC), ensuring detection (PHI/PII scanning) and protection of sensitive data
- Build reusable platform services, APIs, and tools that enable self-service analytics and AI development
- Implement observability, monitoring, and evaluation frameworks for data pipelines and AI/LLM systems
- Optimize platform performance, scalability, and cost efficiency via FinOps dashboards
- Develop lightweight application for search and discovery, cataloging, and onboarding new datasets
Benefits
- comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums
- generous paid time off
- paid family leave
- foundation-paid retirement contribution
- regional holidays
- opportunities to engage in several employee communities
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
