Clutch is hiring a Director of Platform Engineering

Responsibilities

• Conduct a comprehensive review of existing infrastructure, security posture, vendor contracts, and IT operations to identify deficiencies and immediate improvement opportunities.
• Assume full responsibility for vendor relationships and oversee the transfer of accounts from the prior director.
• Build collaborative working relationships with all engineering teams, Finance, Legal, and Customer Success departments.
• Evaluate and enhance incident response procedures and cybersecurity monitoring systems, including Datadog SIEM and Cloudflare.
• Review and improve IT operations, focusing on support service-level agreements and endpoint management.
• Lead vendor rationalization initiatives involving over 30 tools, with potential savings of $229K immediately and $1.2M under assessment, including decision ownership and execution.
• Strengthen compliance programs related to SOC 2 Type II and GLBA, and lead the next audit cycle.
• Optimize cloud infrastructure performance and cost across a multi-account AWS environment using ECS Fargate and Aurora PostgreSQL.
• Enhance sandbox and environment management to support secure and reliable onboarding for credit union clients.
• Define and initiate implementation of team structure and hiring strategy for the platform engineering organization.
• Ensure the platform engineering team is fully staffed and operating with clearly defined ownership boundaries.
• Advance cloud security and data protection, including per-partner data isolation and encryption using AES-256 and FIPS 140-2 Level 3 standards.
• Spearhead a company-wide security awareness initiative to cultivate a security-first mindset across engineering teams.
• Drive automation and tooling enhancements that significantly reduce manual effort for engineering teams.
• Own and present the platform roadmap, including a 12-month infrastructure scaling strategy.

Requirements

• Minimum of 8 years of leadership experience in platform engineering, infrastructure, or security, preferably within B2B SaaS or fintech environments.
• Demonstrated experience managing infrastructure, security, and IT teams in high-velocity settings.
• Extensive expertise with AWS services including ECS Fargate, Aurora PostgreSQL, IAM, KMS, S3, and VPC, as well as infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform and Terragrunt.
• Solid understanding of security frameworks and compliance standards such as SOC 2 Type II, GLBA, CCPA, and preferably PCI DSS.
• Proven track record in managing vendor portfolios and optimizing budgets at scale.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with experience collaborating across engineering, finance, legal, and customer-facing units.
• Self-directed professional who delivers solutions and decisions, not just problems or open-ended questions.

Nice to Have

• Hands-on experience with tools in the current stack such as Cloudflare, Datadog, or Auth0.
• Familiarity with regulatory requirements in credit unions or financial services.
• Experience managing IT support teams with SLA-based workflows.
• Background in Zero Trust architecture and identity and access management (IAM) strategy.
• Fluency in both English and Portuguese, given the Brazil-based engineering team.

Benefits

• Fully remote work environment, enabling global employment and flexible scheduling.
• Biannual in-person team off-sites in engaging locations to strengthen collaboration and innovation.
• Generous paid time off policy including 20 days of PTO annually and observed national holidays.
• Equity compensation through stock options, aligning personal contribution with company success.
• Financial support for home office setup to ensure a productive remote workspace.
• Dedicated budget for professional development through work-related travel and co-working spaces.

Work Arrangement

Remote (Worldwide)

Team

80-person organization; leads a cross-functional team covering Infrastructure, Security, and IT. Current team includes an Infrastructure Engineering Manager (Lucas Sousa), security specialists, and IT support. Engineering is divided into Lending, Foundations, Security and IT, Account Opening, and cross-functional units (HAL AI, Data).

Other

• This role is offered on a contractor basis.
• Applicants must possess valid work authorization for their country of residence.
• Employer cannot sponsor work permits or visas for this position.
• Bilingual English/Portuguese proficiency is beneficial due to the Brazil-based engineering team.
• The role may adapt over time based on evolving business needs; adaptability is valued.
• Candidates are expected to complete interviews without AI assistance to assess individual reasoning and communication skills.

No visa sponsorship or work permit assistance available for this role.