Head of Platform Engineering

Full-time · Mangaluru, India · Senior leadership · Reports to: Chief Technology Officer ABOUT VINYL EQUITY We're building the next generation of capital-markets infrastructure, starting with a modern, digital-native transfer agent designed for today's public companies. Our platform replaces slow, manual processes with secure, automated workflows — delivering the first API-driven, real-time infrastructure for public companies. Backed by Index Ventures, Spark Capital, Jump, MUFG, and Infinity Ventures, our team includes veterans from NYSE, Equiniti, Computershare, and AngelList. Our Engineering team is headquartered in Mangaluru. ABOUT THE ROLE As one of three engineering leaders reporting directly to the CTO, you will help shape the technical foundations and engineering capabilities that enable Vinyl to scale. You will own the shared technical layer that enables our application teams to build, deploy and operate securely at scale. This is one of Vinyl's first senior leadership hires, and you will sit on the engineering leadership team. You will lead this layer through its functional managers and technical leads, with direct reports across Cloud Infrastructure, Security & IT, Data Products, Evaluation Engineering and Platform Services, along with a Senior GRC Business Analyst shared across the platform organization. You'll inherit established teams in some of these functions and build others from the ground up, hiring and growing the organization as Vinyl scales. Vinyl stays intentionally lean, so you'll remain hands-on in the areas you're building while setting direction, driving outcomes and shaping how the platform organization evolves. This is an in-office position in Mangaluru, India. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES - Own Cloud Infrastructure, setting standards for AWS provisioning, cost, reliability, observability, disaster recovery and business continuity. - Own Security & IT, setting security standards across access, secrets, vendor access, audit readiness and security operations. - Own Data Products, hiring and leading its technical leadership, and building the data and applied AI capabilities supporting analytics, regulatory requirements and shareholder intelligence. - Own Evaluation Engineering, establishing evaluation, QA and production-readiness standards across application and platform engineering, including AI-assisted and automated work. - Hire and lead the team responsible for Platform Services, covering AuthN/AuthZ, the common API and communication stack, digital signatures, and the frontend platform. Establish the architecture, standards, and operating practices that enable application teams to build and ship efficiently and securely. - Take a seat on engineering-wide architecture forums, helping set technical direction across the application and platform layers. - Build the leadership bench for each function, with succession plans for every leadership role. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - Cloud Infrastructure: Reliable, scalable and cost-efficient infrastructure with strong observability and operational resilience. - Security & IT: Strong security posture, clear controls and audit readiness across the platform. - Data Products: Trusted data capabilities that support analytics, regulatory requirements and applied AI use cases. - Evaluation Engineering: Consistent quality and production-readiness standards across application and platform engineering. - Platform Services: Shared capabilities that reduce complexity and enable application teams to build and ship faster. In your first 6 months: - Leaders in place, or hiring underway, for every function, including Data Products and Platform Services. - Baselines for each measure below agreed with the CTO. - Cloud Infrastructure: uptime and production incidents tracked against the agreed baseline. - Security & IT: open audit findings tracked and closing, with access reviews and secrets management in place. - Data Products: data quality measured on every regulatory report. - Evaluation Engineering: evaluation coverage measured on application and platform releases. In your first 12 months: - Each measure above reaches its agreed 12-month target. - Application teams ship faster, with time saved tracked and reported quarterly. You are accountable to the CTO for the reliability, security and quality of the platform. Across the platform, you establish clear ownership, strong technical standards and scalable practices that enable the application layer to move faster without compromising reliability, security or quality. ROLE REQUIREMENTS - 18+ years in engineering, including at least 5 years leading managers or function leaders across infrastructure, security, data or quality engineering. Candidates with 15+ years will be considered where the scope has been exceptional. - Strong technical depth in infrastructure, data platform, security engineering or related domains, with a hands-on foundation. You should be comfortable contributing individually while setting direction, hiring talent and growing teams. - Direct, end-to-end ownership of a production data platform, with sufficient infrastructure and security depth to lead those functions through their technical leaders. - Prior experience working in a small, resource-constrained company or lean team, where you’ve operated with greater individual ownership than a similar role at a larger company would require. - Comfortable operating in a regulated, high-integrity financial-services environment where infrastructure, data, or security mistakes are genuinely costly. - Bachelor's degree in a relevant technical field, or equivalent hands-on experience. NICE TO HAVES - Transfer agency / registrar / SEC 17Ad / DTC / DTCC experience. - Experience building security engineering or data platform capabilities from the ground up. - AI-assisted engineering experience. - Experience at a company of a broadly similar size (well under 100 people). BENEFITS - Competitive compensation based on experience - Equity participation - Comprehensive health insurance (self + family), wellness and meal benefits - A high-ownership opportunity to shape the technical foundations of a modern capital-markets platform and influence how engineering scales across the organization. - Modern, AI-first engineering environment — Claude is a first-class tool here, not an afterthought To apply: submit your résumé below. In your résumé, please highlight a function, system, or team you've built from close to zero (what you inherited, what you built, and how you measured it).