VP of Engineering

VP of Engineering

Platform Architecture & Scale

About Advocate

Advocate is transforming how Americans access government benefits. Using cutting-edge AI technology, we're reducing months-long disability application processes to days, helping vulnerable citizens get the support they deserve. After 2.5 years of rapid growth, we've built systems with increasing scale and complexity. Now we need an architectural visionary to design our next-generation platform.

The Opportunity

We're seeking a VP of Engineering who sees elegant simplicity where others see overwhelming complexity. You'll partner with our CTO to head architecture and engineering, reimagining how case development platforms should work in an AI-first world. This role is for an architect who finds simple elegance in design, creating minimal technical surface area to deliver maximum value. You understand that the best systems grow incrementally but are guided by a coherent vision from day one - not through endless complexity or components without consideration for the whole.

The Role

You'll lead and mentor a team of engineers while partnering with our CTO to define platform architecture. This uniquely combines deep technical architecture, strategic thinking, and hands-on engineering leadership. You'll need world-class system design skills paired with the ability to inspire brilliant engineers toward a unified vision.

The Person We're Looking For

Essential Background You're an accomplished architect and engineering leader who has designed sophisticated platforms that model human workflows with AI to transform facts into meaningful insights. You've led teams through platform transformations and built best-in-class user experiences. Most importantly, you've fully integrated AI into your workflow - it's not a tool you use, it's a partner that amplifies your capabilities 10x.

Core Responsibilities

• Architectural & Engineering Leadership
  :
  Partner with the CTO to design enterprise-grade systems that seamlessly blend event-driven architectures, stream processing, workflow orchestration, and AI pipelines. Build and mentor a high-performing engineering team, creating a culture where engineers grow while delivering exceptional results. Your architectural reviews are teaching moments; your pair programming sessions demonstrate AI-amplified development
• AI-Native Development Culture
  :
  Champion the use of AI in every aspect of development. At Advocate, we believe in human intellectual amplification through AI partnership   we'll never be "vibe coders." You'll establish workflows and practices that make AI collaboration second nature for the entire team, teaching others to achieve 10x productivity through AI partnership
• Platform Evolution
  :
  Design systems that handle data changing over time through human and machine steps. As humans review data and AI generates insights, your architecture must elegantly handle cascading changes while maintaining perfect audit trails. Transform existing systems into clean, scalable patterns while maintaining 99.99% uptime
• Simplicity Through Sophistication
  :
  Create architectures that are profoundly simple despite underlying complexity. The best solution to a 10-component problem might be 3 elegant abstractions, not 20 micro-services

Technical Excellence

• AI & Architecture Mastery :
  You've developed a profoundly effective personal workflow with Claude Code, Codex, GPT-5, and other AI systems. You understand the difference between "vibe coding" and true AI partnership. You're equally fluent in distributed systems patterns (event sourcing, CQRS, saga patterns), know when to use Kafka vs. Kinesis vs. neither, and understand AWS services deeply without being dependent on them
• Framework & Performance Expertise
  :
  Experienced with modern orchestration (Temporal, Airflow), data processing (Spark, Flink), and application frameworks   understanding their internals, not just usage. You predict bottlenecks before they exist and design security-first systems where protection is inherent, not added

Cognitive Approach

• Systems Thinker
  :
  You see connections others miss   between data points, algorithms, and human processes. You question every assumption from first principles. Your designs start from fundamental truths, not industry conventions
• Right, A Lot
  :
  Your instincts about what will work are correct more often than not. You have a track record of successful bets on architectural decisions that seemed risky but proved transformative
• Extreme Ownership
  :
  You're obsessively driven to solve problems. When you take on a challenge, it becomes yours completely. The problem stays with you in the shower, on walks, in dreams. You wake up at 3 AM with breakthrough ideas and immediately test them
• Intellectual Humility
  :
  You understand AI may produce insights beyond human comprehension and build systems that account for this. You admit when wrong and change course quickly
• Communication Clarity
  :
  You can explain distributed consensus to an intern and data sharding to a board member. Your…