Platform Engineering Lead Jobs
Platform Engineering Lead jobs are open across fintech, healthtech, enterprise software, and cloud services, from senior engineer to staff and principal levels, with specializations in Kubernetes orchestration, developer experience, and internal platform tooling. Find a role that fits from the openings below and apply directly.
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Are you ready to shape the future of authentication? Join 1Kosmos and help lead the next wave in identity assurance and passwordless innovation.
1Kosmos is driving the future of identity security, empowering organizations to eliminate passwords and establish trust at every step of the identity lifecycle. As a vibrant team of innovators, we develop advanced authentication solutions trusted by some of the world’s leading brands. Join us as we create a passwordless world and set new standards for digital identity assurance.
Your Title: Engineering Manager, Authentication Platform
Your Location: Hybrid – Edison, NJ HQ
You Report to: SVP of Engineering and Chief Architect
Compensation: $180,000 or more depending upon experience
At 1Kosmos, we are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead technical execution across our Authentication (Auth) Platform, the passwordless, phishing-resistant authentication, SSO, and access services that sit in the login path for millions of users. This is for someone who stays close to the code, brings sound technical judgment, and turns product requirements into secure, highly available, and shippable solutions.
You will guide a distributed team of 4-6 engineers based in India while working closely with Product and the Head of Engineering from our Edison office. This is a hands-on technical leadership role: you will set architectural direction, make design decisions, remove delivery blockers, uphold release quality, and step into the codebase when the team or situation calls for it.
You bring an “always sleeveless” mindset: no issue is too small to investigate, no production incident is beneath you, and no architectural decision should be made without understanding the system that exists today.
What you will do:
- Steer architecture and design: Understand the existing Auth Platform deeply — authentication flows, identity federation, session and token services, and integrations and guide the team toward technically sound designs that align with current capabilities and the longer-term architectural direction.
- Turn product needs into executable engineering work: Partner with Product early to shape requirements, clarify trade-off s, sequence work, and translate feature requests into practical, well-defined engineering plans.
- Own Auth Platform delivery: Keep incoming work organized, priorities clear, dependencies visible, and commitments on track across passwordless login, MFA, SSO, and customer integrations.
- Lead through technical credibility: Participate actively in design discussions, code reviews, debugging, and technical problem-solving. Step into the codebase and contribute directly when needed to validate an approach, unblock a critical effort, or resolve a production issue.
- Set the release-quality bar: Establish and uphold standards for design review, code quality, test readiness, performance, security, standards compliance, and release decisions.
- Own production outcomes: Authentication is in the critical path of every user session. Participate directly in incident response, troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions for Auth services, with a focus on availability and login latency.
- Build secure, reliable systems: Drive sound engineering decisions across Node.js microservices, identity protocols, cloud-based SaaS deployments, Kubernetes, AWS, observability, performance, and platform resilience.
- Guide and unblock the team: Provide daily technical direction, remove obstacles, facilitate effective delivery discussions, and help engineers make good decisions without becoming a status only manager.
- Bring a point of view: Make timely, well-reasoned technical decisions amid ambiguity, clearly communicate trade-offs, and constructively challenge approaches when needed.
- Foster collaborative execution: Work closely with Product, QA, Security, and engineering peers to create a low-ego environment where ownership, rigor, and delivery matter.
What you bring:
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including recent experience guiding technical delivery and engineering teams in a hands-on capacity.
- Identity and access management depth: Experience building or operating authentication, SSO, or IAM platforms in production.
- Proven hands-on technical leadership: Able to lead by example through architecture, code reviews, debugging, technical decision-making, and direct contribution when a critical need arises.
- Sound technical judgment: You form an informed point of view, explain trade-offs clearly, and make decisions when the answer is not obvious.
- Demonstrated delivery leadership: Experience organizing engineering work, identifying dependencies and risks, unblocking teams, and delivering quality capabilities predictably.
- Strong quality and operational rigor: Experience with design and code reviews, automated testing, observability, incident response, root-cause analysis, and release readiness for high availability services.
- Security-first mindset: Practical understanding of secure software development, threat modeling, data boundaries, platform security, and performance considerations in enterprise SaaS.
- Collaborative technical leadership: Ability to influence through technical depth, clarity, and follow through while working effectively across US and India-based teams.
- Willingness to work from Edison, NJ three days per week and maintain meaningful working overlap with the India-based Auth engineering team.
Technical Skills:
- Programming Stack: Node.js / JavaScript / TypeScript - Deep, practical experience building, debugging, reviewing, and supporting production Node.js services. Node.js is the primary language across our microservices environment.
- Java and Go: Working knowledge of Java and Go is secondary but not mandatory.
- Identity protocols and standards: Strong working knowledge of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SAML 2.0; FIDO2 / WebAuthn and passkeys; JWT and token lifecycle management (issuance, refresh, revocation); and NIST 800-63B authenticator assurance levels.
- Authentication and access: Experience with passwordless and multi-factor authentication, session management, adaptive / risk-based authentication, and authorization models (RBAC/ABAC).
- Enterprise identity integrations: Familiarity with directory services (LDAP, Active Directory, Entra ID), SCIM provisioning, and integrating with IdPs and service providers such as Okta, Ping, and Microsoft.
- Applied cryptography: Practical understanding of PKI, certificates, key management, signing and encryption, and secure secrets handling.
- Microservices and distributed systems: Strong experience with service-oriented architecture, API design, inter-service communication, resiliency patterns, scalability, and performance.
- Cloud-based SaaS platforms: Demonstrated experience building and operating secure, scalable, multi-tenant SaaS platforms.
- Cloud Stack: AWS, GCP, Azure - Strong working knowledge of AWS services, cloud deployment patterns, security, monitoring, reliability, and cost-aware operational practices. Hands-on experience with containerized workloads, Docker, Kubernetes, deployment practices, and operational troubleshooting.
- CI/CD and release engineering: Experience with automated build, test, deployment, and rollback practices that support predictable and reliable releases.
- Performance engineering: Experience diagnosing and improving latency, throughput, scalability, and reliability in high-volume, latency-sensitive distributed systems.
Who thrives here:
- Builders who stay close to real technical problems and lead by example.
- Engineers who form a clear point of view, make informed decisions, and take responsibility for outcomes.
- Problem solvers who can move between architecture, delivery details, debugging, and production incidents.
- Pragmatic collaborators who understand existing systems before proposing change.
- People energized by security, performance, reliability, and protecting users from identity fraud.
- Leaders who earn trust through technical credibility, clarity, and follow-through.
What we offer:
- Opportunity to build and lead a critical function at a high-growth Series B startup
- Competitive salary and equity package
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Unlimited PTO Policy
- Collaborative, fast-paced culture where your impact is immediate and visible
Are you ready to shape the future of authentication? Join 1Kosmos and help lead the next wave in identity assurance and passwordless innovation.
1Kosmos is driving the future of identity security, empowering organizations to eliminate passwords and establish trust at every step of the identity lifecycle. As a vibrant team of innovators, we develop advanced authentication solutions trusted by some of the world’s leading brands. Join us as we create a passwordless world and set new standards for digital identity assurance.
Your Title: Engineering Manager, Authentication Platform
Your Location: Hybrid – Edison, NJ HQ
You Report to: SVP of Engineering and Chief Architect
Compensation: $180,000 or more depending upon experience
At 1Kosmos, we are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead technical execution across our Authentication (Auth) Platform, the passwordless, phishing-resistant authentication, SSO, and access services that sit in the login path for millions of users. This is for someone who stays close to the code, brings sound technical judgment, and turns product requirements into secure, highly available, and shippable solutions.
You will guide a distributed team of 4-6 engineers based in India while working closely with Product and the Head of Engineering from our Edison office. This is a hands-on technical leadership role: you will set architectural direction, make design decisions, remove delivery blockers, uphold release quality, and step into the codebase when the team or situation calls for it.
You bring an “always sleeveless” mindset: no issue is too small to investigate, no production incident is beneath you, and no architectural decision should be made without understanding the system that exists today.
What you will do:
- Steer architecture and design: Understand the existing Auth Platform deeply — authentication flows, identity federation, session and token services, and integrations and guide the team toward technically sound designs that align with current capabilities and the longer-term architectural direction.
- Turn product needs into executable engineering work: Partner with Product early to shape requirements, clarify trade-off s, sequence work, and translate feature requests into practical, well-defined engineering plans.
- Own Auth Platform delivery: Keep incoming work organized, priorities clear, dependencies visible, and commitments on track across passwordless login, MFA, SSO, and customer integrations.
- Lead through technical credibility: Participate actively in design discussions, code reviews, debugging, and technical problem-solving. Step into the codebase and contribute directly when needed to validate an approach, unblock a critical effort, or resolve a production issue.
- Set the release-quality bar: Establish and uphold standards for design review, code quality, test readiness, performance, security, standards compliance, and release decisions.
- Own production outcomes: Authentication is in the critical path of every user session. Participate directly in incident response, troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions for Auth services, with a focus on availability and login latency.
- Build secure, reliable systems: Drive sound engineering decisions across Node.js microservices, identity protocols, cloud-based SaaS deployments, Kubernetes, AWS, observability, performance, and platform resilience.
- Guide and unblock the team: Provide daily technical direction, remove obstacles, facilitate effective delivery discussions, and help engineers make good decisions without becoming a status only manager.
- Bring a point of view: Make timely, well-reasoned technical decisions amid ambiguity, clearly communicate trade-offs, and constructively challenge approaches when needed.
- Foster collaborative execution: Work closely with Product, QA, Security, and engineering peers to create a low-ego environment where ownership, rigor, and delivery matter.
What you bring:
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including recent experience guiding technical delivery and engineering teams in a hands-on capacity.
- Identity and access management depth: Experience building or operating authentication, SSO, or IAM platforms in production.
- Proven hands-on technical leadership: Able to lead by example through architecture, code reviews, debugging, technical decision-making, and direct contribution when a critical need arises.
- Sound technical judgment: You form an informed point of view, explain trade-offs clearly, and make decisions when the answer is not obvious.
- Demonstrated delivery leadership: Experience organizing engineering work, identifying dependencies and risks, unblocking teams, and delivering quality capabilities predictably.
- Strong quality and operational rigor: Experience with design and code reviews, automated testing, observability, incident response, root-cause analysis, and release readiness for high availability services.
- Security-first mindset: Practical understanding of secure software development, threat modeling, data boundaries, platform security, and performance considerations in enterprise SaaS.
- Collaborative technical leadership: Ability to influence through technical depth, clarity, and follow through while working effectively across US and India-based teams.
- Willingness to work from Edison, NJ three days per week and maintain meaningful working overlap with the India-based Auth engineering team.
Technical Skills:
- Programming Stack: Node.js / JavaScript / TypeScript - Deep, practical experience building, debugging, reviewing, and supporting production Node.js services. Node.js is the primary language across our microservices environment.
- Java and Go: Working knowledge of Java and Go is secondary but not mandatory.
- Identity protocols and standards: Strong working knowledge of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SAML 2.0; FIDO2 / WebAuthn and passkeys; JWT and token lifecycle management (issuance, refresh, revocation); and NIST 800-63B authenticator assurance levels.
- Authentication and access: Experience with passwordless and multi-factor authentication, session management, adaptive / risk-based authentication, and authorization models (RBAC/ABAC).
- Enterprise identity integrations: Familiarity with directory services (LDAP, Active Directory, Entra ID), SCIM provisioning, and integrating with IdPs and service providers such as Okta, Ping, and Microsoft.
- Applied cryptography: Practical understanding of PKI, certificates, key management, signing and encryption, and secure secrets handling.
- Microservices and distributed systems: Strong experience with service-oriented architecture, API design, inter-service communication, resiliency patterns, scalability, and performance.
- Cloud-based SaaS platforms: Demonstrated experience building and operating secure, scalable, multi-tenant SaaS platforms.
- Cloud Stack: AWS, GCP, Azure - Strong working knowledge of AWS services, cloud deployment patterns, security, monitoring, reliability, and cost-aware operational practices. Hands-on experience with containerized workloads, Docker, Kubernetes, deployment practices, and operational troubleshooting.
- CI/CD and release engineering: Experience with automated build, test, deployment, and rollback practices that support predictable and reliable releases.
- Performance engineering: Experience diagnosing and improving latency, throughput, scalability, and reliability in high-volume, latency-sensitive distributed systems.
Who thrives here:
- Builders who stay close to real technical problems and lead by example.
- Engineers who form a clear point of view, make informed decisions, and take responsibility for outcomes.
- Problem solvers who can move between architecture, delivery details, debugging, and production incidents.
- Pragmatic collaborators who understand existing systems before proposing change.
- People energized by security, performance, reliability, and protecting users from identity fraud.
- Leaders who earn trust through technical credibility, clarity, and follow-through.
What we offer:
- Opportunity to build and lead a critical function at a high-growth Series B startup
- Competitive salary and equity package
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Unlimited PTO Policy
- Collaborative, fast-paced culture where your impact is immediate and visible
Platform Engineering Lead Jobs by Experience Level
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Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software30
- Banking & Financial Services6
- Construction & Real Estate3
- Science & Research2
- Investment & Asset Management2
What Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in platform engineering lead jobs.
- 5 or more years of experience in platform, infrastructure, or DevOps engineering roles
- Deep expertise with Kubernetes, Terraform, and cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure
- Experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines at scale across multiple engineering teams
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical projects and mentor engineers without direct authority
- Strong background in developer experience tooling such as Backstage, internal CLIs, or golden path templates
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related technical discipline
Tips for Your Platform Engineering Lead Job Search
Quantify platform reliability improvements you owned
Hiring managers for platform engineering leads want evidence of measurable outcomes. Replace vague bullets with specific before-and-after results: deployment frequency, incident reduction, or developer onboarding time you shortened through platform work you led.
Tailor your resume to each platform stack
Platform engineering lead roles vary sharply by stack. A listing heavy on Backstage and Crossplane needs different emphasis than one focused on Terraform and ArgoCD. Read each job description closely and surface the tools you have deepest hands-on experience with.
Apply early to roles that fit
Migrate Mate lists platform engineering lead openings from across the United States in one place, so you can find roles that match and apply directly to each listing.
Filter by team structure not just company size
Platform teams inside a 200-person startup operate very differently from a platform org inside a 20,000-person enterprise. Ask in early screens how many engineers the platform team serves and whether you'd be building a platform from scratch or scaling one already in production.
Prepare a system design walkthrough for the interview
Most platform engineering lead loops include a technical design round focused on internal developer platforms, CI/CD architecture, or multi-cluster Kubernetes. Practice walking through a real system you designed, explaining tradeoffs you made and what you would change now.
Negotiate scope and autonomy alongside compensation
At the lead level, the scope of your platform charter matters as much as your offer. Ask specifically whether you will own tooling decisions, have a dedicated headcount to grow, and have a direct line to engineering leadership when making infrastructure tradeoffs.
Platform Engineering Lead Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies are hiring the most platform engineering leads?
The companies hiring the most platform engineering leads right now include Amazon Web Services, The Estée Lauder Companies, and GEICO, with the largest share of openings in California, Washington, and Texas, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Demand is particularly concentrated in organizations that run large multi-team engineering orgs and are investing in developer experience as a product.
How many platform engineering lead jobs are remote?
About 83% of platform engineering lead openings are fully remote or hybrid as of November 2026, making it one of the more remote-accessible senior engineering roles. Sub-areas focused on developer experience tooling and internal platform product work tend to offer the most location flexibility compared to roles with heavy hands-on infrastructure or data center responsibilities.
How do you become a platform engineering lead?
Most platform engineering leads move up from senior software or infrastructure engineering roles where they owned end-to-end delivery of platform components. Building credibility in that path means shipping developer-facing tooling that real teams depend on, driving cross-team infrastructure decisions, and documenting system design choices clearly. Earning certifications in cloud platforms and Kubernetes signals fluency with the core stack most organizations expect at the lead level.
Can I get a platform engineering lead job without prior lead experience?
You can get hired as a platform engineering lead without a prior lead title if you can demonstrate lead-level impact in your current role. Employers focus on whether you have owned large-scale platform projects independently, made architectural decisions, and influenced engineering practices across teams. A strong portfolio of internal tooling or infrastructure work you drove from conception to adoption matters more than whether your title included the word lead.
What does the platform engineering lead interview process look like?
Platform engineering lead interviews typically run across four to six rounds. An initial recruiter screen is followed by a hiring manager conversation focused on leadership style and platform philosophy. A technical design round asks you to architect an internal developer platform or CI/CD system. A coding or systems round tests infrastructure fundamentals. Final rounds usually include cross-functional conversations with engineering directors or product partners who rely on the platform your team would own.
Where can I find and apply to platform engineering lead jobs?
You can find and apply to platform engineering lead jobs on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from across the United States. Find roles that match your stack and experience level, then apply directly to each listing from the page.
See All 397+ Platform Engineering Lead Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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