Devops Distinguished Engineer

Job Description Summary

For over forty years, HarbourVest has been home to a committed team of professionals with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to deliver impactful solutions to our clients and investing partners. As our global firm grows, we continue to add individuals who seek a collaborative, open-door culture that values diversity and innovative thinking.

In our collegial environment that's marked by low turnover and high energy, you'll be inspired to grow and thrive. Here, you will be encouraged to build on your strengths and acquire new skills and experiences.

We are committed to fostering an environment of inclusion that promotes mutual respect among all employees. Understanding and valuing these differences optimizes the potential of both the individual and the firm.

HarbourVest is an equal opportunity employer.

This position will be a hybrid work arrangement. You will receive 18 remote workdays per quarter to use at your discretion, subject to manager approval. For example, you may choose to work in the office 4 days per week and take one remote day weekly (typically 13 weeks per quarter), leaving 5 additional remote days to be used as needed.

We are seeking a Distinguished Engineer to join our Platform Engineering team and provide enterprise-level technical leadership across cloud infrastructure and platform engineering! This role is intended for a highly respected, hands-on technology leader who sets technical direction, raises engineering standards, and delivers durable outcomes through influence, working across teams, portfolios, and functions.

As a Distinguished Engineer, you will invent improvements for our internal developer platforms and production delivery capabilities. You will guide architecture and implementation decisions that improve system dependability, protection, and delivery speed at scale. You will partner closely with engineering management, development and data groups, vendors, and IT collaborators. Together, you will define strategy, establish reference architectures, and drive complex, cross-organizational initiatives. These initiatives will span from building through adoption within an Azure-first environment. This role operates across the full application and data lifecycle, with accountability for measurable improvements in developer experience, operational perfection, and platform resilience!

You deeply understand modern software delivery and platform operating models and apply them to reduce toil, strengthen system design, and increase organizational throughput. Inspired by The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, you champion fast feedback, continuous learning, and shared ownership, and you be responsible for the cultural and technical change required to sustain those outcomes at an enterprise scale.

The ideal candidate is:

• Recognized technical authority with a track record of delivering enterprise-scale platform and cloud outcomes by inspiring others and hands-on leadership

• Deep grounding in DevOps principles and modern operating models (The Three Ways, Five Ideals) with proven, measurable impact on flow, reliability, and engineering quality spanning several groups

• Expertise designing and governing GitHub-based engineering systems at scale (branching/merging strategies, policy-as-code, inner source patterns, repo standards, and secure controls for software delivery pipelines)

• Proven track record defining continuous integration, continuous delivery, and build and deployment systems reference architectures. These include pipelines-as-code, quality gates, approvals, and dynamic delivery widely adopted across an organization.

• Deep experience with artifact lifecycle governance (versioning, promotion, retention) including modern supply chain practices such as provenance and SBOM generation

• Strong engineering craft in automation and tooling (Bash, Python, and/or PowerShell), capable of building reusable frameworks and paved roads-not just one-off scripts

• Architecture-level experience with cloud platforms (Azure preferred) including landing zones, identity, networking, observability, and infrastructure-as-code patterns at enterprise scale

• Expertise in container ecosystems and runtime governance (Docker/Podman and orchestration), including standards for image creation, hardening, and deployment patterns

• Strong background in security, risk management, and operational rigor, incorporating policy-as-code, auditability, and control design without sacrificing delivery speed

• Demonstrated success leading improvements to production readiness, incident response, and root-cause elimination-driving systemic fixes and approaches to ensuring system dependability

• Ability to deliver results in ambiguous, high-stakes environments, setting priorities and aligning stakeholders across functions and leadership levels

• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to translate sophisticated technical tradeoffs into clear recommendations for executive and non-technical audiences

• A collaborative, servant-leader approach with a sustained record of elevating DevOps and platform maturity throughout various groups via standards, mentoring, and enablement

What you will do:

Set technical direction and own the evolution of our engineering ecosystems and cloud delivery capabilities, establishing reference architectures, standards, and paved roads that materially improve engineering efficiency, reliability, and security.

• Lead major migrations and platform transitions (e.g., Azure DevOps to GitHub) by defining target-state architecture, sequencing, governance, and adoption strategy

• Design and steward enterprise CI/CD and release engineering platforms, delivering reference implementations and reusable templates that teams can adopt with minimal friction

• Establish standardized delivery workflows across development, test, and production that improve lead time, change failure rate, and mean time to restore

• Define integration patterns across DevOps tooling and enterprise platforms (e.g., ServiceNow) to enable traceability, compliance, and measurable controls

• Drive developer self-service and paved-road experiences for provisioning and deployments, treating internal platforms as products with clear ownership and feedback loops

• Set and carry out source control and release governance standards (branching, versioning, promotion, policy-as-code) aligned to security and audit requirements

• Lead development of enterprise-grade infrastructure-as-code patterns (modules, pipelines, testing) for Azure compute, storage, networking, and identity foundations

• Define container and runtime standards to streamline deployments while strengthening security posture and software supply chain integrity

• Create pragmatic guardrails and security controls that enable teams to move quickly and safely, partnering with risk and security stakeholders

• Lead by example in production excellence-improving incident response processes, reliability engineering practices, and root-cause elimination across teams

• Partner with engineering leadership to align roadmaps, investment, and standards for high-impact platform initiatives

• Build and sustain a platform engineering and delivery excellence community of practice, coaching teams and evolving standards based on metrics, feedback, and emerging standards

• Support additional critical initiatives as needed

What you bring:

• A passion for building extraordinary platforms and raising engineering standards through hands-on leadership and influence

• Demonstrated dedication to continuous improvement, joint accountability, and technical excellence-paired with the judgement to prioritize the highest-leverage work

• Experience leading enterprise programs spanning source control, CI/CD, infrastructure, and the environment supporting developer productivity, including adoption, enablement, and operating model changes

• Enterprise-scale experience designing and operating developer platforms, delivery systems, and reliability practices across many teams and applications

• Deep, hands-on expertise with the modern engineering toolchain (e.g., GitHub, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, artifact repositories), including platform hardening, governance, and lifecycle management

• Strong software engineering skills for building maintainable automation and platform components (Bash, Python, or PowerShell), including testing and documentation

• A shown history of driving sophisticated initiatives through collaboration with multi-functional teams, including risk, security, operations, and senior leadership

• Capability to convert technical decisions into clear, compelling narratives that support investment decisions, roadmap tradeoffs, and organizational alignment

• A strong preference for mentoring, coaching, and multiplying impact-building capability across engineering communities

Nice to Have:

• Experience leading container platform strategy and migrations (e.g., OpenShift, AKS), including operating model and multi-team adoption

• Familiarity evaluating orchestration and platform options, including cost, reliability, security, and developer experience tradeoffs

• Experience with infrastructure-as-code ecosystems (Terraform, Bicep, OpenTofu) including module strategy, policy integration, and automated testing

• Familiarity with ALM and portfolio tooling (e.g., Jira) and how to connect engineering execution to roadmap outcomes and metrics

Experience

• Bachelor's degree in a technology-related field, advanced degree preferred, or equivalent experience

• 15+ years of experience spanning platform engineering, software delivery, and cloud infrastructure in enterprise environments, with sustained impact across multiple teams or business units

#LI-Hybrid

Salary Range

$172,000.00 - $258,000.00

This USD base salary range represents only one component of total compensation for this role and is provided in accordance with local requirements. This role is eligible for a discretionary annual bonus, which is determined based on individual and overall firm performance. In addition to salary and bonus, total compensation may include eligibility for long-term reward programs and a comprehensive total rewards package that may include retirement, health, insurance, paid time off, and wellness programs. Our total rewards offerings are influenced by several business factors, and eligibility for certain components will vary by position and geography. Please note the posted ranges do not apply outside the U.S. and should not be converted to other currencies as a proxy for compensation in other countries.