Vice President, Platform Engineering
Join Udemy. Help define the future of learning.
Udemy is an AI-powered skills acceleration platform built to help people and teams grow. It’s personalized, practical, and focused on real-world impact.
Our mission is simple: to transform lives through learning. Your work helps people around the world build skills they can use, whether they’re picking up something new or leveling up to stay ahead.
Over 80 million learners and 17,000 businesses already learn with Udemy. If you’re excited by change, energized by learning, and ready to have a real impact, you’ll feel right at home.
Learn more about us on our company page.
Where we work
Udemy is headquartered in San Francisco with global offices in Australia, India, Ireland, Mexico, Türkiye and two other US locations (Denver and Austin). This is an in-office position, requiring three days a week in the office (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) and flexibility on Mondays and Fridays.
About Your Skills
Software Architecture: You oversee the design of complex, scalable technology systems that support business growth. You think holistically about technical infrastructure, making strategic decisions to modernize the platforms, frameworks, and architectural patterns that enable teams to build robust, maintainable solutions at scale.
Strategic Planning: You set long-term technology vision and roadmaps that align engineering initiatives with business objectives. You anticipate future needs, allocate resources effectively, and create comprehensive plans that guide the organization toward achieving its technical and competitive goals.
Champion Change: You lead transformational initiatives across engineering teams and the broader organization. You inspire adoption of new technologies, processes, and methodologies by building consensus, communicating vision clearly, and supporting teams through periods of transition and growth.
Stakeholder Management: You build strong relationships with executives, product leaders, and cross-functional partners to ensure engineering priorities align with business needs. You communicate technical concepts effectively to non-technical audiences and collaborate to drive mutual success across the organization.
About This Role
As VP of Platform Engineering, you will lead our engineering organization through a period of technological evolution. You'll be responsible for driving technical strategy, modernizing systems, and ensuring our platform can support millions of learners worldwide. This role offers the opportunity to shape the future of online education technology while building a world-class engineering culture that attracts and retains top talent.
What You'll Be Doing
- Define and execute comprehensive engineering strategy that aligns with company objectives and supports scalable growth
- Lead, mentor, and grow a diverse team of engineering managers and individual contributors across multiple disciplines
- Partner with product, design, and business leaders to deliver transformational learning solutions, while modernizing the systems and structure that support these solutions
- Drive adoption of best practices in software development, including code quality, testing, security, and performance optimization
- Oversee technology stack decisions and architectural evolution to ensure platform reliability and scalability
- Establish and monitor key engineering metrics, including delivery velocity, system reliability, and team health indicators
- Build and maintain strong relationships with executive leadership, providing regular updates on engineering progress and challenges
- Foster an inclusive, collaborative engineering culture that promotes innovation, learning, and professional development
What You'll Have
- 10+ years of progressive engineering leadership experience, including 5+ years in senior engineering management roles
- Proven track record of scaling engineering teams and organizations through periods of rapid growth
- Deep experience with modern software architecture patterns, cloud platforms, and distributed systems at scale
- Strong background in leading cross-functional initiatives and driving technical strategy in complex product environments
- Experience building and managing engineering teams of 50+ people across multiple disciplines and locations
- Demonstrated success in partnering with product and business leaders to deliver customer-focused technology solutions
- Track record of implementing engineering best practices, development processes, and quality standards
- Experience with education technology, e-learning platforms, or consumer-facing web applications is a plus
* Bonus points: a track record of getting your hands dirty in:
- Kotlin/Java/JVM, Go, TypeScript
- GraphQL, gRPC, Kafka
- Kubernetes, AWS Cloud services and datastores, and Databricks
Posting Date: 10/17/2025
Application Window: We anticipate the application window will be open until 10/24/2025. Based on business needs, this opportunity may remain posted beyond or closed before the anticipated application window.
At Udemy, we strive to be transparent around compensation. Actual compensation for this role is based on several factors, including but not limited to job-related skills, qualifications, experience, and specific work location due to differences in the cost of labor. In addition to a base salary, this role is also eligible for equity and a bonus.
Hiring Compensation Range
$355,000 - $415,000 USD
Why work here?
You’ll grow here.
Learning is part of the job. You’ll get full access to Udemy courses, a monthly UDay to invest in yourself, and a budget to spend on whatever helps you improve. Many people are diving into AI lately, but what you focus on is up to you.
AI is real here.
We use it in the way we learn and the way we work. You’ll have the space and tools to experiment, apply, and get better at using AI in practical ways.
You’ll own your work.
We trust people to lead, make decisions, and follow through. You don’t need to wait for permission or layers of approval to have an impact.
You’ll build with others.
We collaborate openly and shape ideas together. Everyone has a voice, and good thinking is welcomed from any direction.
You’ll see your impact.
What you build helps people grow their skills, change their careers, or find a path forward. You’ve got the experience, why not use it to help others gain theirs?
Bring your curiosity. We’ll bring the platform and the support. Let’s LEARN together.
Our Benefits Start with U
Our benefits start with you and were built to provide you and your family with the protection and care you need, making it easy to access the right coverage when you need it most. Benefits vary by region, and we encourage applicants to review our Australia Benefits, India Benefits, Ireland Benefits, Mexico Benefits, Turkiye Benefits & US Benefits, pages to get an understanding of some of the benefits we offer. For details on region-specific benefits, please refer to the information provided during the hiring process.
Information regarding data privacy is available within the Udemy Careers Privacy Notice.
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