Director, Platform Engineering

Launch Consulting

  • Illinois Washington
  • Permanent
  • Full-time
  • 2 months ago
Be part of Launch Consulting’s Platform Engineering discipline and spearhead the success of groundbreaking projects for our clients and internal teams. At Launch, we offer a dynamic and growing company culture where talented individuals can do their best work. With competitive salaries, excellent benefits, opportunities for growth, and community involvement, we provide the environment for you to build a career you’re proud of. Your next journey starts here at Launch!The Role:As the Director of our Platform Engineering Discipline at Launch Consulting, you will be a pivotal leader in shaping and delivering our Platform Engineering strategy, solution architecture, and advisory services to a diverse client base. You will also drive the creation of reusable platform accelerators to enhance Launch’s data, AI, and software development solutions. You’ll leverage your extensive platform engineering and cloud expertise to help clients build their own modern platforms, drive developer productivity, enhance system reliability, and enable rapid innovation.Responsibilities Include:Discipline & Practice Leadership:
  • Lead and grow the Platform Engineering discipline, establishing best practices for client advisory, solution architecture, and platform delivery.
  • Mentor and guide a team of platform engineering consultants, fostering continuous improvement, professional development, and a strong client-service and innovation mindset.
  • Define technical standards and frameworks for platform solutions that balance innovation, security, developer experience, and cost-efficiency for both client engagements and internal accelerators.
  • Foster a culture of automation, self-service, and infrastructure-as-code, empowering the team to build and advise on robust, cutting-edge platforms.
  • Develop and execute the go-to-market strategy for Platform Engineering offerings.
Client Advisory & Solution Architecture:
  • Lead client engagements to assess current platform capabilities, define future-state platform strategies (including data, AI, and developer platforms), and create actionable roadmaps.
  • Architect and design secure, scalable, and high-performance platform solutions for clients, leveraging cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP.
  • Advise clients on adopting platform engineering best practices, cloud-native technologies, and modern operational models (e.g., SRE, FinOps).
  • Guide clients in implementing CI/CD pipelines, developer tooling, observability, and governance for their platforms.
Accelerator & IP Development:
  • Spearhead the design and development of reusable platform components, blueprints, and accelerators to fast-track Launch’s delivery of data, AI, and custom development solutions.
  • Ensure these internal platform assets are secure, scalable, well-documented, and easily consumable by Launch’s delivery teams.
  • Drive the adoption of these accelerators within Launch to improve project efficiency and quality.
Presales & Stakeholder Engagement:
  • Lead and support presales activities for Platform Engineering opportunities, including client workshops, proposal development, solutioning, and presentations.
  • Collaborate with Launch’s sales, delivery, and other practice leads to identify and pursue client opportunities.
  • Build and maintain strong relationships with key client stakeholders, acting as a trusted advisor on their platform journey.
  • Effectively communicate complex technical concepts and the value proposition of platform engineering to both technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Manage your time effectively to achieve approximately 30% billable client utilization, with the remaining time focused on practice development, presales, and thought leadership.
Security, Compliance, & Operational Excellence:
  • Champion DevSecOps principles, ensuring security and compliance are embedded into platform architectures for clients and internal assets.
  • Advise clients on platform security best practices, governance, and compliance with industry standards.
  • Promote SRE principles to help clients and internal teams achieve high availability, reliability, and performance for their platforms.
Capability Development & Industry Trends:
  • Continuously refine and expand Launch’s Platform Engineering methodologies, offerings, and intellectual property.
  • Stay ahead of platform engineering, DevOps, SRE, data/AI platform, and cloud technology trends, incorporating them into client advisories and Launch’s internal strategy.
  • Create opportunities for your team to continuously upskill and remain competitive in the rapidly evolving platform and cloud landscape.
Preferred Qualifications:
  • Proven experience (10+ years) in platform engineering, SRE, DevOps, or cloud infrastructure, with demonstrated leadership in technical teams and client-facing consulting roles.
  • Expertise in architecting, building, and advising on platform solutions (developer, data, AI) across major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP).
  • Strong proficiency with infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform, Crossplane, Pulumi), containerization and orchestration (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), and CI/CD systems (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions).
  • Demonstrable experience developing reusable assets, frameworks, or accelerators for platform engineering.
  • Solid understanding of observability, cloud security best practices, FinOps, and strategies for optimizing platform services.
  • Excellent communication, presentation, and client relationship management skills, with proven success in presales and delivering technical solutions to business stakeholders. Strong business acumen and ability to translate technical solutions into business value for clients.
  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
Compensation & Benefits:As an employee at Launch, you will grow your skills and experience through a variety of exciting project work (across industries and technologies) with some of the top companies in the world! Our employees receive full benefits—medical, dental, vision, short-term disability, long-term disability, life insurance, and matched 401k. We also have an uncapped, take-what-you-need PTO policy. The anticipated wage range for this role is $200,000-$215,000. Education and experience will be highly considered, and we are happy to discuss your wage expectations in more detail throughout our internal interview process.

Launch Consulting