Engineering Leader - Platform

Basis equips accountants with a team of AI agents to take on real workflows.

We have hit product-market fit, have more demand than we can meet, and just raised $34m to scale at a speed that meets this moment.

Built in New York City. Read more about Basis here.

The Platform Engineering team at Basis builds and runs the infrastructure that powers our AI research and products. We're a lean team that loves building large-scale distributed systems from scratch. We focus on clarity: clean abstractions, simple mental models, and clear interfaces that help our product and research teams move fast.

We build the foundational capabilities an AI accountant needs. That means modeling the accounting world (concepts, workflows, constraints) and providing solid foundations: scalable services, efficient data pipelines, and comprehensive observability.

As an Engineering Leader on the Platform team, your job is to help the team succeed. You'll work toward ambitious technical goals while building both the people and systems that make success sustainable. You'll shape technical direction, develop great engineers, and make sure what we build today still makes sense a year from now.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll design systems, review architecture, debug tough problems, and set technical standards. You'll also coach, develop, and unblock others so the team can do great work independently.

Drive impact at the company level

• Translate company priorities into clear technical goals for the platform team.

• Align infrastructure, data, and modeling work to help Basis ship faster and more reliably.

• Anticipate scaling, cost, and reliability challenges before they become problems.

• Make tradeoffs that serve our long-term mission, not just immediate needs.

Build and grow the team

• Hire, mentor, and develop exceptional engineers.

• Create an environment where people feel challenged, supported, and proud of their work.

• Build a culture of clarity, accountability, and feedback where people own problems and share what they learn.

• Stay calm, authentic, and decisive, especially during uncertain times.

Elevate the craft

• Stay deeply technical: design architectures, review critical code, and set standards for performance and reliability.

• Push for simple, elegant systems with clear boundaries between components.

• Continuously improve our processes (recruiting, onboarding, incident response, project planning) so the organization scales smoothly.

• Leave every system and every person better than you found them.

📍 Location: NYC, Flatiron office. In-person team.

• You think in systems (technical, human, and organizational) and can navigate all three.

• You see company success and team success as the same thing.

• You're equally comfortable designing a schema, writing Terraform, or coaching someone through a difficult conversation.

• You communicate clearly, make decisions confidently, and challenge ideas to find the best solutions.

• You're constantly curious and always iterating, learning, and raising the bar.

• You're skilled at breaking complex problems into clear steps and managing execution.

• You explain concepts clearly and collaborate well with people at all levels.

• You question assumptions and apply lessons creatively to new situations.

• You're excited to build both technical and cultural foundations as we scale rapidly.

• You prefer working in person and enjoy face-to-face collaboration in our NYC office.

• You're fully committed to seizing this opportunity and driving Basis's success.