Director of Platform Engineering

Department

Provost Globus

About the Department

Globus (www.globus.org) is a sustainable, non-profit unit within The University of Chicago delivering solutions to the research community worldwide. Globus develops and provides critical services that support scientific research for governmental, academic, and commercial organizations in a wide range of disciplines including life sciences, physics, and astronomy. We develop and operate commercial-quality, cloud-based software application and platform services used by 10s of thousands of researchers to manage their large–and growing–data management challenges. We have offices located at the NBC Tower in the heart of downtown Chicago and remote employees who work-from-home. Globus, together with Globus Labs, a research group within the University of Chicago, and part of the Data Science and Learning Division at Argonne National Labs, develop and deploy cutting edge technologies to solve new challenges facing the scientific community and enable break-through scientific discoveries.

Job Summary

We are seeking an experienced leader to serve as the Director of Platform Engineering for Globus. A key leadership role in the unit, this position provides technical leadership and strategic direction for the Globus platform to drive delivery and evolution. You'll guide critical technology decisions, lead recruitment efforts, and provide architecture leadership on strategic engagements to shape and deliver scalable, robust solutions that meet evolving business needs. Managing backend engineering and operations teams, you'll mentor talent, build a strong, diverse organization, and foster an inclusive culture that attracts top talent. As a senior leader on the team, you'll collaborate with other functional leaders to ensure the growth and success of Globus.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Define technical vision and architecture for cross-cutting priority initiatives, and provide leadership for such product initiatives.

• Drive platform evolution to support scale, performance, and new platform use cases.

• Translate business requirements into well-designed applications while balancing user and business needs, technical competencies, and industry developments.

• Partner with engineering and operations managers to ensure cohesive design patterns, consistent practices, operational excellence, and timely delivery.

• Collaborate with the Clients team to align backend service capabilities with client application requirements and user experience goals.

• Guide decisions on infrastructure, server technologies, programming languages, platforms, and frameworks that best serve organizational goals.

Customer Engagement & Product Strategy

• Collaborate with the customer team and when appropriate directly with customers, to understand usage patterns and  gather feedback to inform product enhancements.

• Work closely with product management  to ensure effective prioritization and resource allocation for timely delivery of high-value capabilities.

• Partner with the support team to provide expert guidance on platform usage, and provide technical leadership on strategic professional service engagements.

People Management & Development

• Manage backend engineering and operations teams, including managers and individual contributors. Set clear expectations, provide feedback, and conduct performance reviews.

• Mentor and coach team members to grow technical and leadership capabilities; create clear career paths and development opportunities.

• Lead recruitment to build a strong engineering organization, including defining needs, interviewing candidates, and building diverse and highly effective teams.

• Foster an inclusive, collaborative engineering culture that attracts and retains top talent; address team health and engagement proactively.

• Manages employees by establishing annual performance goals, allocating resources, assessing annual performance, and determining individual merit, incentive and/or promotional increases. Provides technical oversight and develops standards, guidelines, and processes for application systems.

• Creates plans to translate business requirements into well-designed applications while balancing user and business needs, technical competencies, industry developments, and time constraints.

• Performs other related work as needed.

Minimum Qualifications

Education:

Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.

Work Experience:

Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 7+ years of work experience in a related job discipline.

Certifications:

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Preferred Qualifications

Experience:

• Experience leading technical teams and managing direct reports, preferably across multiple teams or product domains.

• Experience with building large scale distributed applications, and supporting production deployment with large customer base.

• Experience leading and coordinating cross cutting initiatives in a product organization, and engaging across functions (e.g. product management, customer engagement).

Technical Skills or Knowledge:

• 15+  years of professional software engineering experience.

• 10+ years in Python or C/C++.

• 5+ years of technical leadership roles defining architecture and technical direction for complex systems.

• Deep expertise in backend technologies, including database, APIs, micro-services, cloud platform.

• Expertise architecting and designing software/platform-as-a service applications.

• Strong understanding of software development best practices, including testing, CI/CD, and operations (monitoring).

• Experience working directly with customers to understand needs and provide technical solutions.

Preferred Competencies

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

• Strong analytical and problem solving skills.

• Excellent organizational skills and constant attention to detail.

• Ability to articulate project needs and effectively communicate with coworkers in a respectful and collaborative manner.

• Effectively prioritize, triage, and manage competing priorities and deadlines.

• Mastery of fundamental concepts, practices, and procedures of software development applications and tools.

Working Conditions

• This job requires occasional evening or weekend hours.

• This job may be a remote position with occasional attendance at in-person meetings required, including attendance and travel to customer sites and conferences.  

Application Documents

• Resume (required)

Job Family

Information Technology

Role Impact

People Manager

Scheduled Weekly Hours

37.5

Drug Test Required

No

Health Screen Required

No

Motor Vehicle Record Inquiry Required

No

Pay Rate Type

Salary

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FLSA Status

Exempt

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Pay Range

$194,000.00 - $210,000.00

The included pay rate or range represents the University’s good faith estimate of the possible compensation offer for this role at the time of posting.

Benefits Eligible

Yes

The University of Chicago offers a wide range of benefits programs and resources for eligible employees, including health, retirement, and paid time off. Information about the benefit offerings can be found in the Benefits Guidebook.

Posting Statement

The University of Chicago is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or expression, national or ethnic origin, shared ancestry, age, status as an individual with a disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under the law. For additional information please see the University's Notice of Nondiscrimination.

 

Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the application process should call 773-702-5800 or submit a request via Applicant Inquiry Form.

 

All offers of employment are contingent upon a background check that includes a review of conviction history.  A conviction does not automatically preclude University employment.  Rather, the University considers conviction information on a case-by-case basis and assesses the nature of the offense, the circumstances surrounding it, the proximity in time of the conviction, and its relevance to the position.

 

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