The posting
Every engineer at Northwestern Mutual depends on Infrastructure Platforms to build, run, and improve the systems that support our clients, advisors, and enterprise partners. We run the cloud, container, database, integration, observability, and reliability platforms that roughly 1,800 engineers use every day.
We are looking for an executive leader to guide this organization through its next chapter: advancing cloud modernization, consolidating infrastructure capabilities, and running enterprise platforms with operational discipline. This is a leadership role for someone who understands the technology deeply, sets clear direction, and builds the operating model that helps teams deliver faster, safer, and with greater consistency.
What you will own
- Strategy, roadmap, and delivery for Infrastructure Platforms
- Executive sponsorship of cloud modernization and platform simplification, including the commercial planning, governance, and operating discipline needed to support enterprise adoption.
- Enterprise vendor strategy and commercial governance for cloud, developer experience, infrastructure, and managed-service capabilities, with AWS experience preferred.
- Production operations for the platforms, including incident response, problem management, and the reliability program that reduces outages year over year.
- Platform reliability, cost, and security posture across the company’s cloud and on-premises infrastructure.
- Recruiting, developing, and retaining engineering leaders and senior engineers.
Who we are looking for
- You are a technology leader with strong platform judgment. You have the depth to engage credibly with architects and senior engineers, ask the right questions, and make sound decisions on architecture, reliability, security, and cost. You know how modern platforms work and how to hold teams accountable for their outcomes.
- You lead by example. You set the standard by doing the work visibly, and you hold your leaders to the same standard with clear expectations, regular follow-through, and direct feedback. The leaders in this organization are strong, and they do their best work when their executive sets direction, keeps the pace, and removes obstacles rather than waiting for status reports.
- You favor progress over perfection. You ship the 80 percent solution, measure it, and improve it, and you teach your teams to do the same. You are comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and changing course when the data says so.
- You run platforms as products. You define clear customers, service levels, roadmaps, guardrails, and adoption goals. You measure success through platform adoption, reuse, availability, developer productivity, operational efficiency, security posture, cost discipline, change failure rate, and mean time to restore, then use those measures to guide priorities and investment.
- You never stop learning. Cloud, platform engineering, and AI-assisted software development change every quarter. You stay current by using the tools yourself, and you expect your organization to do the same.
- You are a servant leader. You are generous with credit, specific with praise, and honest when something isn’t working.
What you will do
- Set and communicate a clear multi-year vision for Infrastructure Platforms and translate it into quarterly outcomes the organization can execute against.
- Partner across the technology platform organization to consolidate developer experience platforms so engineers have one paved road for building, testing, and deploying software.
- Complete the move to pipeline-first delivery and remove standing production access across the estate.
- Guide cloud, infrastructure, developer experience, and managed-service vendor relationships with disciplined demand planning, commercial governance, and outcome-based performance management. AWS experience is preferred given the company’s primary cloud environment.
- Run production operations for the platforms with a continual reduction in outages as the standing goal: lead major incident response, own the post-incident review process, and turn recurring failure modes into engineering work with named owners and dates.
- Define and manage the platform scorecard for the organization, including adoption, reuse, availability, change failure rate, mean time to restore, incident trends, onboarding and provisioning time, unit cost, security and risk posture, developer satisfaction, and delivery cycle time.
- Represent Infrastructure Platforms to the CIO, the executive leadership team, and enterprise partners, and represent Northwestern Mutual to the broader engineering community.
Key measures of success
- Higher adoption of standard cloud, container, database, middleware, integration, and observability platforms.
- Improved availability, recovery time, change quality, disaster recovery performance, and incident trends.
- Lower unit cost, stronger consumption efficiency, accurate forecasts, and retirement of legacy costs.
What you bring
Required
- 15 or more years in software or infrastructure engineering, including 8 or more years leading engineering organizations.
- Experience leading large cloud migrations that is inclusive of application modernization, developer platform consolidation, and infrastructure simplification.
- Deep, current expertise in at least one major cloud provider (AWS preferred), container platforms, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and observability.
- A track record of building platforms that other engineering teams depend on, with measurable results in reliability, delivery speed, or cost.
- Experience running production operations for a large platform estate, including incident response, on-call programs, post-incident review, and measurable improvements in reliability or restore times.
- A track record of managing an engineering organization through metrics, with outcomes you can name and numbers behind them.
- Experience managing enterprise vendor agreements and partner performance across cloud, infrastructure, developer tools, or managed-service platforms.
- Working fluency in software engineering, architecture, cloud platforms, automation, and operational practices, with the ability to engage senior technical teams and translate technical tradeoffs into business decisions.
Preferred
- Experience in financial services or another regulated industry.
- Experience introducing AI-assisted development tools to a large engineering organization.
- A public record of technical writing, speaking, or open-source contribution.
Why this role
Northwestern Mutual relies on Infrastructure Platforms to help engineering teams build, run, and improve critical systems with greater speed, reliability, security, and cost discipline. You will inherit a strong leadership team, a mature platform foundation, and executive sponsorship for continued modernization. The opportunity is to operate the platform with clear product discipline, increase adoption of standard patterns, reduce duplication, and help the company make well-informed decisions about the next stages of cloud and infrastructure modernization.
Compensation Range:
Pay Range - Start:
$220,000.00
Pay Range - End:
$330,000.00
This role is eligible for additional short-term and long-term incentive compensation.
We believe in fairness and transparency. It’s why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you’re living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.
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Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer that welcomes talented individuals of all backgrounds. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.
