> Markdown version of [/jobs/ext/4659720-head-of-platform](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/ext/4659720-head-of-platform). Every page supports `.md` or `Accept: text/markdown`. Links point to the HTML versions so they work for humans too. Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Head of Platform - **Company:** Ironsite AI Inc. - **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States - **Experience:** Expert - **Salary:** $300,000 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Web Services, Code Review, Data Infrastructure, PostgreSQL, Project Management Software, Node.Js, Software Architecture, Redis, Software Engineering, TypeScript, Computer Network Operations, ReactJS, Data Layers, Information Technology, Production Code, Integration Frameworks, Real Time Data, Api Design, Industrial Software, Autodesk Autocad - **Published:** November 10, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.careerbuilder.com/job-details/head-of-platform-san-francisco-ca--1c351f8b-56a6-4a6b-8c15-fc544d5f905f ## About the Role Data Modeling, Sports, Network Operations Center, Construction, Philosophy, Hospital, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), Construction Projects, Operating Systems, * 10+ years of engineering experience, with at least 4 years in senior engineering leadership roles (Staff/Principal + management, Director of Engineering, Head of Engineering, or VP of Engineering) at a company you're proud of. * Deep hands-on technical expertise across the modern web stack (React/TypeScript, Node.js, PostgreSQL, Redis, AWS). You can read, review, and write production code, and you still do. Weekly, at minimum. * Strong track record of shipping systems that scaled by orders of magnitude in throughput, users, or data volume, and doing so without over-engineering early or accumulating dead architectural weight late. * Demonstrated leadership at scale: you've hired, mentored, and managed engineering teams of at least 10 to 30 people, including managers who reported to you. * Systems thinking that spans the full stack and cross-team integration. You care as much about the seams between systems and the seams between teams. * Real ability to partner with founders and other functional leaders. You've worked directly with technical founders before, held your ground, and made them and their companies better. * A background in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field, or the equivalent hands-on experience. Strongly preferred * Experience as the first or founding platform engineering leader at a Series A or B startup, where you built the function from a small IC-heavy team into a real engineering org. * Experience at a company that combined hardware and software, or at a company deploying software into industrial, field, or physical-world environments. * Deep experience with data infrastructure, API design, third-party integrations, or real-time data and analytics surfaces. * A history of raising the bar around you: promoting engineers from Senior to Staff, Staff to Principal, and IC to Manager. Building the next generation of engineering leaders., * Experience shipping products that had to work reliably for non-technical users in real-world conditions (mobile field applications, industrial software, etc.). * Experience with AI-adjacent engineering, especially at the seams between research teams and production engineering. * Genuine excitement about industries that have been underserved by software, and interest in becoming the person who leads the team that builds the platform the physical world runs on. ## Description We're hiring our first Head of Platform to lead the team building Ironsite's platform, the product surface that turns our data into the intelligence construction teams act on every day. You'll own the technical direction, execution, and growth of the platform engineering team as we scale from a small IC-heavy group into a full function over the next 18 to 24 months. The team you'll lead owns the dashboards project leaders open at 5 AM, the labor-management tools superintendents run their entire jobsite on, the mobile experience craft workers carry in their pocket, and the integration layer that connects Ironsite to the software the industry already lives in. You'll partner directly with our CTO on technical strategy, and work in parallel with our Head of Infrastructure, who owns the systems layer underneath the platform. Together, the two of you own the technical foundation for what Ironsite ships to customers. You'll set the technical bar across the platform team through architectural decisions, code reviews, hiring calibration, and the standard of judgment you bring to every conversation. This is a leadership role, not an IC role. Your primary job is building and leading the platform team. But you're the kind of leader who is genuinely in the code every week, reviewing PRs across your team, contributing to architectural decisions at the design level, and shipping code alongside your engineers when the work calls for it. The best engineering leaders never lose the technical muscle that got them here. You review, you build, you lead, and you make sure the platform gets stronger every quarter. What You'll Own Platform strategy and technical direction. * Own the technical strategy for the platform engineering team in partnership with the CTO. * Set the architectural direction for the platform (dashboards, labor-management tools, craft worker mobile experience, integrations, ground truth tooling), and make sure the seams between them stay clean as the surface area grows. * Partner closely with the Head of Infrastructure to make sure the platform and the underlying infrastructure evolve together, not in tension. * Review meaningful PRs and architectural decisions across your team. You're the technical review layer that catches problems before they ship. * Contribute code weekly. Whether it's a critical fix, a proof of concept for a new architecture, or shipping alongside a team on a hard problem, you're in the codebase, not just around it. Team leadership and org design. * Own the platform team's org design: how the team is structured, how it communicates, how decisions get made, and how work flows. * Hire, mentor, and manage the platform engineering team, including engineering managers as the team grows. * Build the operating cadence: planning rhythms, code review standards, technical rituals, on-call practices, and how the team runs day to day. * Set the culture that makes Ironsite's platform team a place where great engineers want to be. Bar-raising, high-agency, deeply technical, and honest about what's working and what's not. Delivery and execution. * Own the platform team's delivery. Ship on time, ship well, and be honest about tradeoffs. * Drive the delivery discipline that turns ambitious plans into shipped products and that makes engineering a partner to product and business, not a bottleneck. * Own the metrics that matter for the team: velocity, quality, reliability, and business impact of what ships. Growth and scaling the function. * Scale the platform team from where it is today into a real engineering function over the next 18 to 24 months, without losing the culture, technical bar, or delivery quality that got us here. * Partner with the founding recruiter and talent team on hiring strategy, comp calibration, and closing top candidates. * Build the career growth paths, performance frameworks, and internal mobility model that make the platform team a place engineers stay and grow. Product and business partnership. * Partner with product, design, hardware, and research leadership on what the platform team builds and why. * Bring engineering judgment to conversations about pricing, packaging, product strategy, and how Ironsite competes in the market. * Represent the platform team externally when needed: customer conversations, partner meetings, and recruiting., * Turning raw model output into insights that have to be right by 5 AM. Every night, our system processes thousands of hours of jobsite video into production reports that superintendents open before the crews arrive on site. The deadline is real, the reports have to be trustworthy, and the underlying model outputs are messy at the scale we operate. Your team owns the data layer and reporting surface that makes this happen without fail. * Building the integration layer for an industry running on legacy tools. Ironsite has to interoperate with Procore, Autodesk, Trimble, and a long tail of ERP and payroll systems that are decades old and often internally inconsistent. Your team designs the architecture that lets Ironsite pull ground-truth data from and push insights back into systems the industry actually uses, while insulating our platform from the chaos of those interfaces. * Scaling the platform to handle orders-of-magnitude growth. The platform will need to support tens of thousands of craft workers, hundreds of thousands of devices, and millions of hours of processed video over the next few years. You'll make the architectural decisions today that hold up when the workload becomes real. * Building the technical bar and keeping it high as the team grows. At a small team, the founding engineers can review everything. As the team scales, no one person can. You'll build the review culture, the architecture standards, and the mentorship model that keeps the bar rising as we grow, not falling. * Balancing speed with quality. The platform team is shipping fast because the business is growing fast. Your job is to make sure we ship at speed without accumulating debt that slows us down in 12 months., * First 30 days. You know the platform team, the codebase, the roadmap, and every engineer on the team. You've built strong relationships with our CTO, the Head of Infrastructure, and the leadership team. You've identified the top three areas where the team needs to strengthen fastest: architecture, team composition, delivery discipline, or something else. You've reviewed enough code to have real opinions on the state of the codebase. * First 3 months. The platform team is shipping with clear delivery discipline. Code review standards are raising the bar across the team. You've made or scoped the first key hires, and the leads underneath you are visibly better because of your mentorship. You're contributing code weekly on real problems. The architectural direction you're driving is visible in what's shipping. * First 6 months. You're the internal authority on how Ironsite's platform team operates. The team has scaled meaningfully, the technical bar has risen, and Ironsite ships faster and better than we did a year ago. When we scale from thousands of devices to hundreds of thousands, we do it because the team you built, the technical direction you drove, and the culture you established hold up.