Craig Baker
About
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VP of Engineering
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Résumé
Jobs
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VP of EngineeringUpGuardMay 2025 - Current (1 year 5 months)Remote-first, high-trust engineering team building security software where the stakes keep rising.
2026 engineering focus (five compounding bets): Architecture boundaries, boring releases (pipeline-first delivery), SSDLC guardrails + security champions, reliability with latency discipline, and AI-assisted development (agent-first workflows).
We optimise for end-to-end ownership, low ego, and respectful debate.- VP of Architecture, EngineeringImmutableJan 2023 - Nov 2024 (1 year 11 months)Co-led Engineering and Data Science, owning technical strategy and architecture for Immutable’s digital ownership platform serving game studios and players. Joined post–$200M Series C to help scale the organisation, reporting to the CTPO.
- Senior Director of Engineering — Afterpay (acquired by Block)BlockFeb 2022 - Dec 2022 (11 months)Joined Block as part of Afterpay US$29B acquisition. Helped scale platform, engineering practices, and architecture inside a global org.
- Senior Director, Platform Engineering & ArchitectureAfterpayJul 2020 - Jan 2022 (1 year 7 months)Head of Platform Engineering: Built and led a global platform organisation of 50 engineers, enabling faster and safer delivery across product teams through core platform capabilities including observability/SRE, developer infrastructure, and a unified runtime platform.
• Owned the platform vision and execution to evolve the architecture into a distributed, highly resilient system processing ~$10B/year in payments, improving reliability at scale.
• Built a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that replaced fragmented runtime environments, simplifying infrastructure, strengthening security controls, and accelerating application delivery. - Chief ArchitectAfterpayApr 2014 - Jun 2020 (6 years 3 months)Defined engineering strategy and architecture standards that scaled Afterpay from inception to 400+ engineers.
• Led and scaled engineering hiring from the early days, including establishing the US engineering presence.
• Led and pitched a complex custom integration with eBay, unlocking ~$200M/year in incremental GMV post-launch. - Engineering LeadFlybuysOct 2012 - Apr 2014 (1 year 7 months)Led a 15-person engineering + design team to rebuild and launch Flybuys’ personalised, mobile-first eCommerce experience for Australia’s largest loyalty program—delivered on time and raised the bar on quality and performance.
- Engineering ManagerSensisMay 2010 - Jul 2012 (2 years 3 months)Led a 25-person team to build and run a business intelligence platform delivering advertiser performance reporting and insights.
- Senior EngineerSensisOct 2008 - Apr 2010 (1 year 7 months)
- MCo-FounderMayhem MethodJul 2008 - Jan 2010 (1 year 7 months)Launched revenue-generating self-study, flash cards based application with intelligent scheduling
- Solution ArchitectSensisFeb 2008 - Jul 2008 (6 months)
- TChief ArchitectTanglerApr 2005 - Dec 2007 (2 years 9 months)
- Engineering LeadSHINE TechnologiesDec 2001 - Apr 2005 (3 years 5 months)
- ConsultantOracleJan 2000 - Jan 2001 (1 year 1 month)
Education
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- VCEWesley College
- Bachelor's degree, Computer Science and EngineeringMonash University