Engineering Leader - Platform Engineering

About Basis

Basis equips accountants with a team of AI agents to take on real workflows.

We have hit product-market fit, have more demand than we can meet, and just raised $34m to scale at a speed that meets this moment.

Built in New York City. Read more about Basis here.

About The Team

The Platform Engineering team at Basis designs, builds, and operates the infrastructure that powers our AI research and products. We’re a lean team that loves architecting large-scale distributed systems from first principles. We obsess over clarity: clean abstractions, simple mental models, and crisp interfaces that let our product and research teams move fast without breaking things.

We’re not building “features”—we’re building capabilities for an AI accountant. That means modeling the world the agent lives in (accounting concepts, workflows, and constraints) and providing rock-solid foundations: scalable services, efficient data pipelines, and end-to-end observability.

About The Role

• As an Engineering Leader on the Platform team, your job is to make the team successful—to achieve ambitious technical goals and to build the people and systems that make that success sustainable.
• You’ll be responsible for shaping technical direction, building world-class engineers, and ensuring that what we build today still feels right a year from now.

This is a highly hands-on leadership role: you’ll design systems, review architecture, debug hard problems, and set standards for technical excellence—but you’ll also coach, grow, and unblock others so that great things happen without you.

What You’Ll Be Doing:

• Drive impact at the company level2. Build and grow the team3. Elevate the craft
• Translate company priorities into clear technical goals for the platform team.
• Align infra, data, and modeling work so that Basis ships faster and more reliably.
• Look around corners: anticipate scaling, cost, and reliability challenges before they arrive.
• Make tradeoffs that serve the long-term mission, not just the local optimum.
• Hire, mentor, and grow exceptional engineers.
• Create an environment where people are challenged, supported, and proud of their craft.
• Foster a culture of clarity, accountability, and feedback—where problems are owned and learning is shared.
• Model calmness, authenticity, and conviction, especially when things are uncertain.
• Be deeply technical: design architectures, review critical code, and guide standards for performance and reliability.
• Insist on simple, elegant systems and crisp boundaries between layers.
• Continuously improve processes—recruiting, onboarding, incident response, project planning—so that the organization scales with the product.
• Leave every system and every person better than you found them.
• Translate company priorities into clear technical goals for the platform team.
• Align infra, data, and modeling work so that Basis ships faster and more reliably.
• Look around corners: anticipate scaling, cost, and reliability challenges before they arrive.
• Make tradeoffs that serve the long-term mission, not just the local optimum.
• Hire, mentor, and grow exceptional engineers.
• Create an environment where people are challenged, supported, and proud of their craft.
• Foster a culture of clarity, accountability, and feedback—where problems are owned and learning is shared.
• Model calmness, authenticity, and conviction, especially when things are uncertain.
• Be deeply technical: design architectures, review critical code, and guide standards for performance and reliability.
• Insist on simple, elegant systems and crisp boundaries between layers.
• Continuously improve processes—recruiting, onboarding, incident response, project planning—so that the organization scales with the product.
• Leave every system and every person better than you found them.

📍 Location: NYC, Flatiron office. In-person team.

What We’D Love To See:

• Think in systems—technical, human, and organizational—and can navigate all three.
• See the success of the company and the success of the team as one and the same.
• Are equally comfortable designing a schema, writing a Terraform module, or coaching someone through a tough conversation.
• Communicate clearly, make decisions with conviction, and are unafraid to challenge ideas to find the best one.
• Are relentlessly curious and iterative—learning, refining, and raising the bar every week.
• Process-oriented: Skilled at breaking down complex problems into clear, repeatable steps and managing execution.
• Strong communicator: Clear in explaining concepts and comfortable collaborating across all levels of seniority.
• First-principles reasoner: Question assumptions and apply lessons creatively to new situations.
• Company-builder: Eager to lay groundwork both technically and culturally as we rapidly scale.
• Office lover: Prefers face-to-face interactions in our NYC office.
• All-in: Driven to seize a massive opportunity, accelerate growth, and commit deeply to Basis’s success.
• Are relentlessly curious and iterative—learning, refining, and raising the bar every week.
• Process-oriented: Skilled at breaking down complex problems into clear, repeatable steps and managing execution.
• Strong communicator: Clear in explaining concepts and comfortable collaborating across all levels of seniority.
• First-principles reasoner: Question assumptions and apply lessons creatively to new situations.
• Company-builder: Eager to lay groundwork both technically and culturally as we rapidly scale.
• Office lover: Prefers face-to-face interactions in our NYC office.
• All-in: Driven to seize a massive opportunity, accelerate growth, and commit deeply to Basis’s success.

What Success Looks Like In This Role

In accordance with New York State regulations, the salary range for this position is $100,000 –$300,000. This range represents our broad compensation philosophy and covers various responsibility and experience levels. Additionally, all employees are eligible to participate in our equity plan and benefits program. We are committed to meritocratic and competitive compensation.