Associate Senior Product Owner - Platform Engineering

The Associate Senior Product Owner - Platform Engineering leads the technical design, development, and operations of the Internal Developer Platform (IDP) and cloud infrastructure at the World Bank Group. This senior technical role drives the transition to a product-oriented platform engineering discipline, mentoring junior staff and collaborating with stakeholders to deliver secure, scalable, and efficient software delivery workflows.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical design, development, and operations of the Internal Developer Platform (IDP), serving as the primary technical authority and decision-maker for platform architecture.
• Own the end-to-end implementation of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) practices using Terraform, ensuring consistent, auditable, and repeatable infrastructure provisioning across cloud environments.
• Define, build, and maintain golden paths — opinionated, pre-approved software delivery workflows and templates — that enable development teams to deliver software securely and efficiently without requiring deep infrastructure expertise.
• Architect and operate cloud infrastructure on both AWS and Azure, ensuring platforms are secure, scalable, cost-efficient, and aligned with WBG policies and standards.
• Serve as the lead engineer for the Internal Developer Portal (using Port.io), driving adoption, feature development, and integration with the Bank's software delivery ecosystem.
• Champion the philosophical and operational shift from traditional infrastructure management to platform engineering, articulating the value of this transformation clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders alike.
• Develop and maintain a platform roadmap in alignment with ITS strategy, anticipating the evolving needs of internal development teams and proactively addressing capability gaps.
• Contribute to the Bank's broader DevSecOps culture by embedding security, observability, and developer experience considerations into every layer of the platform.
• Partner closely with teams responsible for AI platforms such as Databricks and AWS Bedrock to understand their deployment patterns, requirements, and agreed standards — then translate those into automated, repeatable provisioning pipelines owned and operated by the Platform Engineering team.
• Automate the provisioning and lifecycle management of AI infrastructure components in accordance with standards defined by the owning teams, ensuring consistency, auditability, and scalability across environments.
• Bring sufficient hands-on familiarity with AI agent development to engage meaningfully with AI platform teams, understand their technical needs, and build the automation and self-service capabilities that support their work.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior and mid-level platform engineers, supporting their professional development and technical growth.
• Assign and track technical work across the team, ensuring delivery milestones are met and engineering quality standards are upheld.
• Collaborate closely with the team leader on capacity planning, technical onboarding, and cross-team coordination.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly and effectively to a wide range of audiences, including non-technical stakeholders, senior management, and external partners.
• Represent the Platform Engineering team in cross-ITS technical forums, architecture reviews, and vendor engagements.
• Produce clear technical documentation, architecture decision records (ADRs), and platform usage guides to ensure knowledge is well-shared and accessible.
• Engage with Enterprise architecture to align platform engineering strategy with broader ITS technologies.

Requirements

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a closely related technical field, with a minimum of 8 years of relevant professional experience; or a Bachelor's degree with at least 10 years of equivalent experience.
• Demonstrated expert-level proficiency in Infrastructure-as-Code, with extensive hands-on experience using Terraform in production environments across multi-cloud or hybrid cloud deployments.
• Proven practical experience with AWS and Azure cloud services, including compute, networking, identity, storage, and security services.
• Active, hands-on experience building or operating an Internal Developer Platform (IDP), using either Port.io or Backstage (or equivalent tooling).
• A working background in software development — the candidate must have meaningfully written and shipped production code.
• Deep understanding of the platform engineering discipline, including the rationale for golden paths, self-service infrastructure, and the transition away from ticket-driven, operations-centric infrastructure models.
• Working familiarity with AI infrastructure platforms such as Databricks and/or AWS Bedrock — sufficient to automate their provisioning and lifecycle management via IaC and to engage as a credible technical partner with the teams that own these platforms.
• Hands-on experience building AI agents that address real-world problems.
• Proven ability to guide and mentor junior technical staff, assign and track work, and maintain engineering quality in a team setting without holding formal managerial authority.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to translate technical complexity into clear, compelling narratives for diverse audiences.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, with experience working effectively across organizational boundaries in a large, complex institution.
• Collaborative, low-ego working style with the confidence to advocate for technical positions and the judgment to know when to adapt.
• Relevant cloud certifications (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect, Azure Solutions Architect, HashiCorp Terraform Associate or Professional) preferred.
• Experience working in multilateral development banks, international organizations, or other large, security-conscious enterprise environments preferred.
• Familiarity with platform engineering metrics and developer experience (DevEx) measurement frameworks preferred.
• Contributions to open-source projects in platform engineering, IaC, or AI infrastructure space preferred.

Skills

• Infrastructure as Code
• Terraform
• AWS cloud platform
• MS Azure Cloud Services
• Internal Developer Platform
• Port.io
• Backstage
• Software Development
• Platform Engineering
• Golden Paths
• Self-Service Infrastructure
• AI Infrastructure Platforms
• Databricks
• AWS Bedrock service
• AI Agents Development
• Technical Mentoring
• Engineering Quality Assurance
• Technical Communication
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Cloud Certifications

Languages

English