Head of Platform Engineering - Underwriting

Role Description:

You will own the end-to-end architecture, reliability, and integration strategy for Cogentiq-UW a cloud-native, multi-tenant underwriting platform that provides centralized visibility, governance, and configuration across modules and agents. You’ll architect high-performance backend systems, design a robust integration layer with insurers’ core systems and third-party data providers, and partner with Data Science to productionize agents safely and explainable. 

This is a hands-on leadership role: you’ll define the platform blueprint (APIs, workflows, state machines), set reliability and security bars (SLOs, DR, SOC2 readiness, GDPR), build out observability & FinOps, champion demo/sandbox environments, and represent engineering in pre-sales and conferences. You’ll also hire and grow a high caliber team that balances quality with execution speed. 

You will:

• Architect the platform’s multi-tenant, API-first, event-driven design, including HIL (Human-in-the-Loop) workbenches, exception handling, state-machines, and audit trails. 

• Lead cloud deployment (multi-region, auto-scaling, active-active/DR), achieve 99.9%+ SLOs, and design for low-latency real-time APIs with graceful degradation. 

• Own the integration layer—out-of-the-box connectors for Guidewire/Duck Creek, SSO (OAuth2/OIDC/SAML), third-party data (credit bureaus, CAT/exposure models, loss databases), and internal tools. 

• Establish security & compliance (E2E encryption, least privilege, key rotation, vuln scanning, SOC 2 readiness, GDPR-aligned data privacy with zero PII retention in analytics stores). 

• Partner with Data Science to deploy agentic/LLM features with guardrails, evaluation harnesses, explainability, and versioned rollout. 

• Build observability (tracing/metrics/logs), alerting based on SLOs, FinOps dashboards (cost monitoring/optimization), usage & billing/chargeback metering, and ROI reporting. 

• Stand up demo & sandbox environments (pre-loaded data, module/agent config testing) to accelerate sales and implementation. 

• Lead presales conversations with IT/Tech leaders, handle RFPs, deliver conference talks, and act as a credible technical face of the platform. 

• Hire, mentor, and evolve the team; define paved roads (CI/CD/IaC), coding standards, and operational excellence (runbooks, incident reviews, upgrade pathways). 

Technical Mastery:

Platform & Systems Architecture (SaaS/B2B) 

• Multi-tenant, API-first, event-driven design with state machines for underwriting workflows; strong versioning, backward compatibility, and feature-flagged rollouts. 

• Robust HIL and exception handling with auditability and idempotent reprocessing. 

Cloud Reliability & Performance (SRE Discipline) 

• Kubernetes + IaC (Terraform/Helm), multi-region topologies, RTO/RPO defined and tested, autoscaling, caching, backpressure, circuit breakers, and p95 latency ownership. 

Enterprise Integrations (Data Providers) 

• REST/OAS3, webhooks, OAuth2/OIDC/SAML, API gateways; resilient connectors to Guidewire/Duck Creek, credit/score providers, CAT/exposure models, loss databases; retries/DLQs/idempotency and dynamic endpoint switching. 

Security, Compliance & Data Governance (BFSI-grade) 

• E2E encryption, KMS/Vault, least privilege, key rotation, vulnerability scanning/pen tests; SOC 2 Type II readiness, GDPR controls, and a no PII analytics architecture with anonymization pipelines and strict access controls. 

Agents/AI Productionization & Data Collaboration 

• Deploying agentic/LLM components with guardrails, sandboxed tool-use, timeouts, evaluation frameworks, drift monitoring, and explainability surfaced in the HIL interface; tight collaboration with Data Science across batch/stream features, model registries, and safe rollouts. 

Qualifications:

Must-Haves 

• 12–15+ years in backend/platform engineering with 5+ years leading platform or core backend teams for B2B/SaaS products. 

• Proven ownership of cloud-native, multi-tenant platforms with 99.9%+ SLOs, multi-region deployments, DR drills, and incident management (runbooks, postmortems). 

• Deep expertise in Kubernetes, IaC (Terraform/Helm), API gateways, queues/streams; strong command of low-latency API design, caching, and throughput optimization. 

• Hands-on enterprise integrations experience with insurer core systems (preferably Guidewire/Duck Creek), SSO (OAuth2/OIDC/SAML), and thirdparty data sources. 

• Strong security & compliance grounding: encryption at rest/in transit, secrets mgmt, key rotation, SOC 2 readiness, GDPR-aligned data privacy, audit trails. 

• Demonstrated delivery of agentic/LLM or ML-powered features in production with measurable reliability and quality (evals, guardrails, rollbacks). 

• Effective customer-facing communicator—confident with CIO/CTO/CISO stakeholders, experienced in presales, RFPs, and conference presentations. 

• Track record building high-performing teams and cultures balancing quality with speed (paved roads, CI/CD, trunk-based dev, strong code review standards). 

Nice-to-Haves 

• Direct accelerators or integration frameworks for Guidewire/Duck Creek; BPM/workflow engines (Temporal/Cadence, Camunda). 

• FinOps practice leadership: cost allocation, showback/chargeback, optimization playbooks. 

• Experience designing usage/billing metering, ROI dashboards, and admin/observability portals. 

• Prior conference talks, publications, or community contributions