Associate Director - Platform Engineering

Blend is seeking an Associate Director to lead the Platform Engineering workstream on a global product delivery. This is a senior, client-facing leadership role. The individual will own the platform engineering workstream end-to-end, act as the primary escalation point to the Delivery Leads, make key technical decisions in partnership with the client, and actively develop junior members of the platform team.

Responsibilities

• Lead on project delivery and governance for the Platform Engineering workstream.
• Support and develop Platform Engineers across the engagement, providing technical direction and day-to-day guidance.
• Build and maintain a scalable, secure, and reliable cloud platform on Microsoft Azure, covering infrastructure, networking, identity, and environment strategy.
• Design and implement CI/CD pipelines and environment automation for engineering and data workloads.
• Define and promote best practices for infrastructure as code, security, monitoring, and observability across the team.
• Act as the primary escalation point to Delivery Leads for platform risks, blockers, and issues bringing context and recommended options, not just problems.
• Operate as Blend's senior technical for representative platform engineering in client-facing settings, building trusted relationships with client engineering and architecture stakeholders.
• Own key platform engineering decisions when working alongside the client, translating technical trade-offs into clear, business-relevant guidance.
• Champion good engineering practices to minimise technical debt and ensure long-term platform reliability.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, setting clear standards for quality, delivery behaviours, and continuous improvement.
• Contribute to Blend's engineering strategy and capability development alongside delivery leadership.

• Proven ability to lead platform engineering workstreams on large, complex custom system development programmes with direct client accountability.
• Deep, hands-on experience designing, building, and operating secure, scalable cloud infrastructure on Microsoft Azure.
• Strong background in DevOps principles, site reliability engineering, or platform engineering in a consulting or professional services context.
• Proficiency in infrastructure-as-code, Terraform in particular — including modular design, remote state, and CI/CD integration.
• Experience with CI/CD pipeline design and automation using GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or equivalent tooling.
• Strong understanding of networking, security, and identity management in cloud environments.
• Hands-on experience with containerisation and orchestration, Docker, Kubernetes, AKS.
• Experience designing and managing decoupled microservice and event-driven architectures at scale.
• Knowledge of monitoring, logging, and observability platforms
• Experience implementing cost optimisation, scaling strategies, and performance monitoring in production systems.
• Demonstrable experience working directly with clients at a senior technical level, including leading workshops, design sessions, and technical reviews.
• Proven track record mentoring and developing platform and DevOps engineers across seniority levels.
• Microsoft Azure: Deep expertise across AKS, App Services, API Management, networking, Key Vault, Managed Identities, Azure Monitor, and Storage. Experience designing multi-region, enterprise-scale architectures.
• Terraform / IaC: Advanced Terraform skills including modular design, remote state management, workspace strategies, and CI/CD integration. Able to set team standards and conduct code reviews.
• Microservices: Proven design and delivery of decoupled microservices at scale, API gateway patterns, event-driven architecture, containerisation (Docker/Kubernetes), service mesh, and observability.
• DevSecOps & CI/CD: Secure delivery pipelines, shift-left security practices, policy-as-code (Azure Policy, OPA), and automated testing within platform pipelines.
• Cloud Governance: RBAC, networking controls, tagging standards, cost management, and compliance baselines across Azure environments.
• Observability: Monitoring, logging, and alerting across platform and application layers
• Security & Identity: Networking security, Managed Identities, Key Vault, and cloud security best practices in a complex enterprise environment.

• Hands-on experience with Databricks on Azure, including Unity Catalog, VNet injection, cluster policies, and integration with Azure storage and identity.
• Experience with security and compliance frameworks (ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR).
• Proven ability to build platform foundations for data and AI workloads.
• In-depth experience with Azure DevOps and GitHub Advanced Security features.
• Relevant certifications: Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert, HashiCorp Terraform Associate, or equivalent.