Vice President, Platform Engineering

Department: Information Technology

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: US-California-San Jose

Compensation: $297,300 - $408,800 / year

The Vice President, Platform Engineering is a member of the Technology leadership team and is accountable for the technology platforms that power Align’s digital products and operations:
Data, AI, Cloud, API, and Identity. This leader sets the strategy, architecture, and operating model for these platforms and treats them as products that let engineering and business teams build faster, more securely, and at scale.

The VP translates business needs into a coherent platform architecture and serves as the primary technical and business authority on Align's platform capabilities. Responsibilities span engineering, securing, and optimizing cloud infrastructure; building a trusted, well-governed data foundation; delivering shared AI and machine learning capabilities with responsible AI guardrails; and providing secure identity and API services for workforce, customer, and partner ecosystems.

The role ensures all platforms meet regulatory and compliance requirements, including SOX, PCI DSS, and applicable privacy regulations.

This leader builds and scales high-performing engineering teams and partners closely with R&D, product, security, and business stakeholders. Strong technical depth, influential leadership, and the ability to drive change in a complex, fast-moving enterprise environment are essential.

The role reports to the Chief Digital Officer and is located in San Jose, CA, or Raleigh, NC.

• Define and own the multi-year vision, strategy, and roadmap for Align’s enterprise platforms (Data, AI, Cloud, API, and Identity), making sure they directly enable the company’s digital product and business strategy.
• Build, lead, and scale high-performing platform engineering organizations. Attract and develop top talent, and foster a culture of engineering excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Operate the platforms as products, with clear internal customers, service levels, adoption metrics, and feedback loops, so product and engineering teams can build faster and more reliably.
• Partner with the Chief Digital Officer, business unit leaders, R&D, product, security, and infrastructure teams to translate business needs into platform capabilities and build consensus on architecture and investment priorities.
• Own platform budgets, vendor strategy, and build-versus-buy decisions. Lead technology evaluations, RFI/RFP processes, proofs of concept, and vendor negotiations.
• Establish architecture standards, reference patterns, and governance that drive modular, reusable, and well-abstracted solutions across the product and enterprise portfolio.

• Lead the architecture, engineering, and operation of the enterprise data platform, including data lake/lakehouse, warehousing, streaming, and integration capabilities.
• Deliver scalable, reliable data pipelines and event-driven data flows that give analytics, AI, and operational systems trusted, timely data.
• Implement data governance, quality, lineage, cataloging, and master data practices that make data discoverable, accurate, and compliant.
• Ensure appropriate protection of sensitive and regulated data, including patient and customer data, in line with privacy regulations (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR).

• Define and execute the enterprise AI platform strategy, providing shared infrastructure, tooling, and services that let teams build, deploy, and scale AI and machine learning solutions safely and efficiently.
• Lead integration with foundation model providers and AI platforms (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS), including model access,…