Senior Platform Engineer

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofitfighting poverty disease and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere regardless of identity or circumstances should have the chance to live healthy productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve.We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical dental and vision coverage with no premiums generous paid time off paid family leave foundation-paid retirement contribution regional holidays and opportunities to engage in several employee communities.As a workplace were committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

Your Role

Are you an experienced Platform Engineer with passion for building next-generation data and AI platforms that help solve some of the worlds most pressing challenges The Gates Foundation is seeking a Senior Platform Engineerto help architect and scale a world-class data and AI ecosystem that powers breakthrough work across global health global development education gender equality and humanitarian response.

This is a unique opportunity for a highly skilled Platform Engineer with deep expertise in Databricks Microsoft Azure and AI technologiesto shape the future of how data and intelligence drive global impact.

In this role you will lead the design and evolution of a modern enterprise-scale platform built on Azure Databricks and Snowflake enabling advanced analytics machine learning and cutting-edge generative AI capabilities. You will help transform vast amounts of structured and unstructured dataincluding research reports program documents survey results and field datainto actionable insights that accelerate decision-making and innovation.

You will work at the forefront of AI leveraging technologies such as Azure OpenAI Claude Azure AI Search and intelligent data servicesto build secure scalable and responsible AI solutions. Your expertise in Databricks and cloud-native engineering will be critical in creating high-performance data pipelines AI-ready architectures and API-driven platforms that empower teams across the foundation.

Beyond technology youll play a key role in establishing trusted governed and ethical AI systems ensuring compliance with global data governance standards through platforms such as Collibra.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture and development of a cloud-native Data and AI platform on Azure Databricks Lakehouse and Snowflake

• Design and implement API-first data platform to enable secure governed data sharing across teams partners and global stakeholders

• Operationalize GenAI solutions for knowledge discovery and decision support including:

  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures

  • Integration with OpenAI and Claude APIs

  • Semantic and hybrid search using Azure AI Search

• Create design patterns for document ingestion parsing OCR metadata extraction and enrichment

• Design and implement embedding and vector search strategies for unstructured data

• Lead the implementation of data governance and stewardship practices using Collibra including:

  • Data cataloging lineage and metadata management

  • Data quality frameworks and stewardship workflows

  • Alignment with global privacy security and compliance standards

• Establish secure data access patterns (RBAC/ABAC) ensuring detection (PHI/PII scanning) and protection of sensitive data

• Build reusable platform services APIs and tools that enable self-service analytics and AI development

• Implement observability monitoring and evaluation frameworks for data pipelines and AI/LLM systems

• Optimize platform performance scalability and cost efficiency via FinOps dashboards

• Develop lightweight application for search and discovery cataloging and onboarding new datasets

Your Experience

• Bachelors or masters in computer science or related field or equivalent experience

• 8 years experience in data platforms with a focus on advanced analytics AI/ML Infrastructure data security and automation

• Experience with analyzing and extracting insights from health and life sciences data (internal and external public repositories) using analytical and reporting tools

• Manage and drive improvements of a lightweight custom application (Data Portal) for self-service data cataloging search and discovery

• Hands-on experience with:

  • Azure (Data Lake Azure ML Event Hubs etc.)

  • IaC automating infrastructure provisioning using Terraform

  • Databricks (Lakeflow Spark Delta Lake workflows Unity Catalog)

  • Snowflake (Iceberg Horizon catalog Cortex AI secure data sharing)

• Experience designing and building API-driven data platforms (REST/GraphQL microservices)

• Experience working with unstructured data processing

• Familiarity with building data pipelines with Databricks and DBT Cloud and orchestration

• Familiarity with Docker Kubernetes and distributed systems

Additional qualifications:

Strong understanding of:

• RAG architectures embeddings and vector databases

• Document chunking indexing and retrieval strategies

• Previous experience with Salesforce would be a plus

• Experience with document processing/NLP pipelines (OCR entity extraction classification)

• Collibra and Data Governance

The salary range for this role is $157400 to $236000 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences in Seattle and Washington D.C. where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $173100 to $259700 USD. As a mission-driven organization we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hires salaries are typically between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidates job-related skills experience and expertise as evaluated during the interview process.

Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located. The Foundation does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. This includes direct company sponsorship and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (eg: H-1B O-1 L-1 E OPT STEM-OPT CPT TN J-1 etc.).

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

Were committed to providing an inclusive and accessible hiring experience for all candidates. If you have a disability or medical condition and need an accommodation at any stage of the application or interview processsuch as an ASL interpreter alternative interview format or physical accessibility supportwere happy to help. Please contact with the position number and a brief description of your accommodation needs. Requests will be handled confidentially.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity equity and inclusion of voices ideas and approaches and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race color age religion pregnancy sex sexual orientation disability gender identity gender expression national origin genetic information veteran status marital status and prior protected activity.