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.

The ideal candidate will be low-ego, highly accountable, technically credible, and experienced leading in a scaled engineering environment. This is an exciting opportunity to join an entrepreneurial team set within a successful, supportive, and innovative market leader. At Hamilton Lane, we are dedicated to delivering technology-driven solutions to our clients, and this role will directly influence a product that is strategically important to the firm and growing rapidly.

Cobalt is an industry-leading diligence and analytics platform for the private markets. As a multi-tenant SaaS platform serving both external clients and internal users globally, Cobalt requires strong leadership across engineering execution, platform operations, quality, and team development. Ownership, communication, stewardship, leadership, and delegation are keys to success in this role.

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.

Qualifications:

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.

Tools and Packages:

• Python: Flask, SQLAlchemy, Celery
• Javascript: React
• Databases: Postgres, ORMs
• Keyed Storage: Redis
• Development tools: Git, Docker, Jenkins

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.

Travel Requirements:

• No travel is required.

Benefits

At Hamilton Lane, our benefits philosophy is simple: to provide our employees with a competitive suite of benefits and services to help navigate through the complexities and challenges of working, living, raising a family, and eventually retiring.

To do this, Hamilton Lane offers the following benefits:

Enhancing Your Physical and Emotional Health

Employees have access to healthcare coverage, mental health resources, health & fitness reimbursement program, and Wellness Rewards Program.

Developing Your Career

Tuition and certification reimbursement programs are available, along with continual education and development trainings for you to grow with Hamilton Lane.

Supporting Your Family & Community

For our communities, Hamilton Lane provides paid time off to volunteer and compensates for referring qualified candidates that join our team.

For growing family, we offer an adoption reimbursement program, paid time off for new parents and newlyweds, and provide travel support for nursing parents.

Safeguarding Your Financial Wellbeing

Hamilton Lane contributes to retirement programs and offers an employee stock purchasing plan.