Associate Senior Product Owner - Platform Engineering

Associate Senior Product Owner - Platform Engineering

Job #: req37164 Organization: World Bank Group Sector: Information Technology Grade: GG Term Duration: 3 years 0 months Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment Location: Washington, DC,United States Required Language(s): English Preferred Language(s): Closing Date: 7/2/2026 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC

Description

Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 130 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org

ITS Vice Presidency Context

The Information and Technology Solutions (ITS) Vice Presidential Unit (VPU) enables the World Bank Group to achieve its mission of ending extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet by delivering transformative information and technologies to its staff working in over 150+ locations. For more information on ITS, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=VTFGffa1Y7w

Background & Context

The World Bank Group's Information and Technology Solutions (ITS) vice presidency is at the forefront of the institution's digital transformation. The Platform Engineering team within ITS is responsible for building and operating the internal developer platform (IDP) and the underlying cloud infrastructure that powers the Bank's technology ecosystem. The team is transitioning from a traditional infrastructure operations model toward a product-oriented, developer-first platform engineering discipline — one that enables software delivery teams to move faster, safer, and with greater autonomy through well-defined golden paths and self-service capabilities.

This is a senior technical role at the heart of that transformation. The selected candidate will serve as the technical authority for platform engineering, driving the design, development, and continuous evolution of the IDP, cloud infrastructure-as-code, and AI infrastructure capabilities. While people management responsibilities rest with the team leader, the candidate will be expected to guide and mentor junior staff, assign and track technical work, and set the engineering standards that define how the team operates.

Duties & Accountabilities

The Senior Platform Engineering Specialist will be responsible for the following:

Technical Leadership & Platform Development

• Lead the technical design, development, and operations of the Internal Developer Platform (IDP), serving as the primary technical authority and decision-maker for platform architecture.

• Own the end-to-end implementation of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) practices using Terraform, ensuring consistent, auditable, and repeatable infrastructure provisioning across cloud environments.

• Define, build, and maintain golden paths — opinionated, pre-approved software delivery workflows and templates — that enable development teams to deliver software securely and efficiently without requiring deep infrastructure expertise.

• Architect and operate cloud infrastructure on both AWS and Azure, ensuring platforms are secure, scalable, cost-efficient, and aligned with WBG policies and standards.

• Serve as the lead engineer for the Internal Developer Portal (using Port.io), driving adoption, feature development, and integration with the Bank's software delivery ecosystem.

Strategic Direction & Platform Evolution

• Champion the philosophical and operational shift from traditional infrastructure management to platform engineering, articulating the value of this transformation clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders alike.

• Develop and maintain a platform roadmap in alignment with ITS strategy, anticipating the evolving needs of internal development teams and proactively addressing capability gaps.

• Contribute to the Bank's broader DevSecOps culture by embedding security, observability, and developer experience considerations into every layer of the platform.

• Partner closely with teams responsible for AI platforms such as Databricks and AWS Bedrock to understand their deployment patterns, requirements, and agreed standards — then translate those into automated, repeatable provisioning pipelines owned and operated by the Platform Engineering team.

• Automate the provisioning and lifecycle management of AI infrastructure components in accordance with standards defined by the owning teams, ensuring consistency, auditability, and scalability across environments.

• Bring sufficient hands-on familiarity with AI agent development to engage meaningfully with AI platform teams, understand their technical needs, and build the automation and self-service capabilities that support their work.

Mentorship & Work Coordination

• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior and mid-level platform engineers, supporting their professional development and technical growth.

• Assign and track technical work across the team, ensuring delivery milestones are met and engineering quality standards are upheld.

• Collaborate closely with the team leader on capacity planning, technical onboarding, and cross-team coordination.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly and effectively to a wide range of audiences, including non-technical stakeholders, senior management, and external partners.

• Represent the Platform Engineering team in cross-ITS technical forums, architecture reviews, and vendor engagements.

• Produce clear technical documentation, architecture decision records (ADRs), and platform usage guides to ensure knowledge is well-shared and accessible.

• Engage with Enterprise architecture to align platform engineering strategy with broader ITS technologies.

Selection Criteria

Minimum Requirements

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a closely related technical field, with a minimum of 8 years of relevant professional experience; or a Bachelor's degree with at least 10 years of equivalent experience.

Required Technical Skills & Experience

• Demonstrated expert-level proficiency in Infrastructure-as-Code, with extensive hands-on experience using Terraform in production environments across multi-cloud or hybrid cloud deployments.

• Proven practical experience with AWS and Azure cloud services, including compute, networking, identity, storage, and security services.

• Active, hands-on experience building or operating an Internal Developer Platform (IDP), using either Port.io or Backstage (or equivalent tooling).

• A working background in software development — the candidate must have meaningfully written and shipped production code. This is not a background in infrastructure alone; the candidate must understand the full software delivery lifecycle from the perspective of a developer.

• Deep understanding of the platform engineering discipline, including the rationale for golden paths, self-service infrastructure, and the transition away from ticket-driven, operations-centric infrastructure models. The candidate must be able to articulate why this shift matters and have experience driving it in a prior role.

• Working familiarity with AI infrastructure platforms such as Databricks and/or AWS Bedrock — sufficient to automate their provisioning and lifecycle management via IaC and to engage as a credible technical partner with the teams that own these platforms. The candidate is not expected to lead AI infrastructure strategy but must be capable of executing automation against it.

• Hands-on experience building AI agents that address real-world problems. This experience is valued as evidence of technical depth and an ability to engage fluently with AI platform teams, not as a core delivery responsibility of this role.

Leadership & Interpersonal Skills

• Proven ability to guide and mentor junior technical staff, assign and track work, and maintain engineering quality in a team setting without holding formal managerial authority.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to translate technical complexity into clear, compelling narratives for diverse audiences.

• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, with experience working effectively across organizational boundaries in a large, complex institution.

• Collaborative, low-ego working style with the confidence to advocate for technical positions and the judgment to know when to adapt.

Preferred Additional Qualifications

• Relevant cloud certifications (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect, Azure Solutions Architect, HashiCorp Terraform Associate or Professional).

• Experience working in multilateral development banks, international organizations, or other large, security-conscious enterprise environments.

• Familiarity with platform engineering metrics and developer experience (DevEx) measurement frameworks.

• Contributions to open-source projects in platform engineering, IaC, or AI infrastructure space.

Competencies

In addition to the technical requirements above, the selected candidate will be expected to demonstrate the following WBG core competencies at the GG level:

• Lead and Innovate — Develops innovative solutions and challenges the status quo with the confidence and evidence to back it up.

• Deliver Results for Clients — Translates technical capability into measurable outcomes for the teams and stakeholders the platform serves.

• Collaborate Within Teams and Across Boundaries — Works effectively across teams, VPUs, and institutional boundaries to achieve shared goals.

• Create, Apply and Share Knowledge — Actively builds and shares technical knowledge; invests in the development of others.

• Make Smart Decisions — Applies sound judgment in fast-moving technical environments; balances speed with rigor.

WBG Culture Attributes:

1. Sense of urgency: Anticipate and quickly respond to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
2. Thoughtful risk-taking: Challenge the status quo and push boundaries to achieve greater impact.
3. Empowerment and accountability: Empower yourself and others to act and hold each other accountable for results.

World Bank Group Core Competencies

The World Bank Group offers comprehensive benefits, including a retirement plan; medical, life and disability insurance; and paid leave, including parental leave, as well as reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity and inclusive employer with a dedicated and committed workforce, and do not discriminate based on gender, gender identity, religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.

Learn more about working at the World Bank and IFC including our values and inspiring stories.