Head of Application Engineering

The Opportunity

The Head of Application Engineering will serve as a senior execution leader responsible for the continued growth, delivery, reliability, quality, and engineering operating discipline of Hamilton Lane’s Cobalt platform and other application initiatives. This leader will oversee application engineering, DevOps/platform operations, QA engineering and testing, while partnering closely with product and executive leadership to ensure strong execution across the full software development lifecycle.

Your Responsibilities

• Lead a global, multi-disciplinary engineering organization across application engineering, DevOps/platform operations, QA engineering and testing.
• Own end-to-end engineering execution for Cobalt, including delivery, reliability, quality, and engineering operating discipline.
• Set engineering direction in partnership with product and executive leadership, ensuring alignment between business priorities, architecture, delivery plans, and operating outcomes.
• Provide leadership on decisions related to architecture, SDLC, quality practices, release discipline, and production operations.
• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team across onshore, offshore, in-office, and hybrid environments.
• Lead through and mentor senior individual contributors, creating clarity, accountability, transparency, and execution rigor across the organization.
• Expand the scope of the engineering team execution over time to support application development around and beyond the core Cobalt product as firm priorities evolve.
• Partner closely with business stakeholders and cross-functional leaders to manage expectations, communicate progress, and deliver strong outcomes.
• Foster a strong engineering culture centered on ownership, collaboration, continuous improvement, and high standards.
• Collaborate with organizational leaders to ensure operations and technology decisions support scale, stability, and thoughtful budget management.
• Operate with integrity and work collaboratively with peers and team members in an open, supportive environment.

Must-haves

• Bachelor of Science degree or higher in Computer Science or similar technical discipline, or equivalent work experience.
• 10+ years of experience in software development or related technology leadership roles.
• Significant experience recruiting, leading, and developing high-performing engineering teams, including distributed and multi-level organizations.
• Demonstrated success leading engineering teams responsible for software development, platform/DevOps operations, and quality engineering in a SaaS-based environment.
• Strong software engineering background with the technical credibility to guide architecture and engineering decisions.
• Deep understanding of software architecture, SDLC, engineering quality practices, operational excellence, and scalable delivery processes.
• Experience operating and scaling mission-critical, external-facing software platforms with high availability expectations.
• Proven ability to partner effectively with product leaders, executive stakeholders, and cross-functional teams in a corporate setting.
• Strong leadership, communication, stewardship, and delegation skills.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience in B2B financial services, alternative asset management, or related industries.
• Experience in a scaled software start-up or similarly fast-paced product environment.
• Experience leading engineering organizations supporting products with global users and 24/7 availability expectations.