Head of Application Engineering

Join Hamilton Lane, a global leader in private markets, as we scale to meet the demands of our growing client base. Here, you’ll work with ambitious, high‑performing teams built on integrity, candor and collaboration, backed by our market-leading data and technology. We invest heavily in our people and our partners, giving you the platform to enrich lives, safeguard futures and grow your career.  
 
What We Do 
As one of the largest private markets investment firms globally, we provide innovative solutions to institutional and private wealth investors around the world, specializing in flexibility and full-spectrum access. We currently employ approximately 800 professionals operating in offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East, and have $1.0 trillion in assets under management and supervision, composed of $146.1 billion in discretionary assets and $871.5 billion in non-discretionary assets, as of December 31, 2025.  

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.

We are looking first and foremost for a hands-on, technically credible leader who came up through the developer path and will double as the senior architect for the Cobalt platform. Equally important is the ability to liaise with stakeholders: this person will communicate across product, sales, client solutions, and data, and will credibly represent Cobalt to clients and the Hamilton Lane executive team.

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.

Your responsibilities will be to:

• Lead a global, multi-disciplinary engineering organization of roughly 20–30 people across application engineering, DevOps/platform operations, QA engineering and testing, spanning onshore, offshore, in-office, and hybrid environments.
• Own end-to-end engineering execution for Cobalt, including delivery, reliability, quality, and engineering operating discipline — with a structured SDLC and clear, measured KPIs.
• Serve as Cobalt's senior architect: own the platform's architecture and technical roadmap, and stay close enough to the code to challenge and guide senior engineers on design, performance, and reliability.
• 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.
• Lead through and mentor senior individual contributors, creating clarity, accountability, transparency, and execution rigor across the organization, while demonstrating high-velocity, agile delivery.
• Expand the scope of the engineering team's 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 — including sales, client solutions, and data — to manage expectations, communicate progress, and deliver strong outcomes.
• Represent Cobalt and the engineering organization credibly to clients and the Hamilton Lane executive team.
• 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.

Your background will include:

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, with recent, hands-on technical depth, including senior architect or lead-engineer responsibility for a production platform. You came up through the developer path and lead as an architectural and product-oriented leader, not a career manager or hands-off administrator.
• Proven track record leading engineering organizations of up to 20–30 people across onshore, offshore, and QA functions, with clear evidence of high-velocity, agile delivery.
• Demonstrated success owning end-to-end engineering execution for a SaaS-based platform — delivery, reliability, quality, and a structured SDLC — including experience defining and measuring engineering KPIs.
• Strong communication skills: able to hold the leadership table and communicate effectively across product, sales, client solutions, and data, and to credibly represent the platform to clients and the Hamilton Lane executive team.
• Strong software engineering background with the technical knowledge 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.
• Strong leadership, communication, stewardship, and delegation skills.
• Recent, hands-on production experience with Python (Flask, SQLAlchemy, Celery), React, and Postgres, or a closely comparable modern web stack with a credible plan to ramp quickly. Familiarity with Redis, Docker, Git, and Jenkins expected.
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose and resolve performance, latency, and scalability problems in a data-intensive, multi-tenant application.

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience leading engineering for a commercial, external-facing SaaS product, as opposed to an internal platform.
• AI fluency - comfort applying AI meaningfully across the engineering organization and product.
• Background in private markets, alternative asset management, or B2B financial services.
• Experience in a software start-up or similarly fast-paced product environment.
• Experience leading engineering organizations supporting products with global users and 24/7 availability expectations.
• A track record of scaling a team up into the ~20–30 person range. Candidates stepping up from smaller teams are welcome; we are more cautious about candidates stepping down from teams of 100+.

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.

Hamilton Lane is an affirmative action-equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to their race, color, creed, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, marital or partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, genetic predisposition, veteran or military status, status as a victim of domestic violence, a sex offense or stalking, or any other classification prohibited by applicable law.

If you need a reasonable accommodation to complete your application, please contact Human Resources at [email protected].

Hamilton Lane is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. Please, no phone calls or emails. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at Hamilton Lane via-email, the Internet or in any form and/or method without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of Hamilton Lane. No fee shall be paid in the event the candidate is hired by Hamilton Lane as a result of the referral or through other means.