Director, Engineering Operations

Felix

$160K — $200K *
Information Technology
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 12+ years in software engineering, infrastructure, or platform operations with 5+ years in senior management (Director level or above).
  • Deep hands-on experience in Cloud Architecture (AWS/GCP), Kubernetes, and Terraform.
  • Oversight of enterprise tooling for CI/CD, observability, and security with specific tools listed.
  • Proven ability to use DORA metrics to drive deployment velocity and system stability.
  • Strong knowledge of zero-trust architectures and compliance standards (SOC2, ISO 27001, PCI).
  • Exceptional leadership and communication skills.

Responsibilities

  • Build, mentor, and scale multi-disciplinary engineering teams across various functions.
  • Manage cloud infrastructure spending, tools, vendor relations, and team budgets effectively.
  • Foster a culture of continuous learning and technical excellence within the engineering teams.
  • Drive the evolution of the developer platform with service-oriented patterns and tools.
  • Architect and optimize CI/CD pipelines for seamless, continuous deployments.
  • Integrate security practices into the development lifecycle for enhanced compliance and risk management.
  • Oversee observability frameworks and maintain service reliability through established SLOs.

Benefits

  • Unlimited PTO for work-life balance.
  • Paid parental leave to support family needs.
  • Health, dental, and vision insurance plans.
  • 401(k) with employer matching for financial security.
  • Opportunities for continuous learning and professional growth.
  • Currently fully remote work model transitioning to a hybrid setup.
Full Job Description
About the Role

We are seeking a visionary, data-driven Director of Engineering Operations to lead, scale, and elevate our foundational technology domains. In this executive leadership role, you will own the strategy, execution, and continuous improvement of our Security, DevOps, QA, Infrastructure, CI/CD, and Observability functions.

You will act as the bridge between core software development and operational reliability, ensuring our engineering teams can ship high-quality, secure code quickly and safely. The ideal candidate is a strategic leader who balances high-level architecture and organizational design with deep technical empathy for developers.

Responsibilities

1. Executive Leadership & Strategic Vision

  • Department Ownership: Build, mentor, and scale multi-disciplinary engineering teams across DevOps, Platform Engineering, Quality Engineering, Infrastructure, and Security Operations.
  • Operational Budgeting: Manage cloud infrastructure costs (FinOps), tooling licenses, vendor relationships, and team budgets to maximize ROI and efficiency.
  • Engineering Culture: Foster a culture of technical excellence, continuous learning, zero-trust security, and high accountability.


2. DevOps, Infrastructure & CI/CD

  • Platform Engineering: Drive the evolution of our developer platform, establishing standard patterns and self-service tools that reduce friction for application developers.
  • Deployment Pipelines: Architect and optimize robust, automated CI/CD pipelines to achieve frictionless, highly reliable, and continuous deployments.
  • Cloud & Edge Infrastructure: Oversee scalable, resilient, and cost-effective cloud architecture (GCP required, AWS ) using Infrastructure-as-Code.


3. Security & Compliance (DevSecOps)

  • SecOps Integration: Embed security practices directly into the development lifecycle, including automated vulnerability scanning, container security, and code analysis.
  • Compliance & Governance: Partner with Legal and Compliance teams to maintain compliance standards (e.g., SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, PCI).
  • Incident Response: Co-lead incident preparedness, red team/blue team exercises, and response protocols for security vulnerabilities.


4. Observability & Site Reliability (SRE)

  • Monitoring & Alerting: Oversee end-to-end observability frameworks (logging, tracing, metrics) to ensure complete system visibility and proactive issue resolution.
  • Reliability Strategy: Define and maintain Service Level Objectives (SLOs), Service Level Indicators (SLIs), and Error Budgets across all platform services.
  • Blameless Culture: Drive robust incident management, post-mortem processes, and continuous system hardening to minimize MTTR (Mean Time to Repair).


5. Quality Assurance & Testing Strategy

  • Quality Engineering: Modernize QA practices by driving an automation-first testing strategy (unit, integration, end-to-end, performance, and load testing).
  • Environment Management: Ensure reliable, scalable, and production-like test and staging environments.


6. Engineering Metrics & Developer Experience (DevEx)

  • Productivity Metrics: Track and optimize core performance metrics, including DORA metrics (Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, MTTR) and SPACE framework indicators.
  • Developer Velocity: Identify bottlenecks in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and relentlessly optimize developer workflows.


Requirements

  • Experience: 12+ years in software engineering, infrastructure, or platform operations, with at least 5+ years in senior engineering management (Director level or above).
  • Technical Mastery: Deep hands-on background in Cloud Architecture (AWS/GCP), Container Orchestration (Kubernetes), and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).
  • Tooling Expertise: Experience overseeing enterprise tooling for:
    • CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, ArgoCD
    • Observability: Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, New Relic, OpenTelemetry
    • Security: Snyk, SonarQube, Wiz, Palo Alto Networks, HashiCorp Vault
    • Developer Portal: Port.io
  • Data-Driven Leadership: Proven track record using DORA metrics and operational data to improve deployment velocity and system stability.
  • Security Acumen: Strong familiarity with zero-trust network architectures, IAM, and compliance frameworks (SOC2, ISO 27001, PCI).
  • Soft Skills: Exceptional cross-functional leadership and clear executive communication style.
  • These are the applicable requirements, although equivalent competencies in any of the above will also be considered.


Nice to have:

  • Experience leading platform engineering transitions or enterprise-scale cloud migrations.
  • Active involvement in the open-source community or CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) landscape.
  • Background managing globally distributed, remote-first engineering teams.


What We Offer

  • Competitive salary
  • Initial stock options grant
  • Annual performance bonus
  • Unlimited PTO
  • Paid parental leave
  • Work model: currently fully remote, with a future transition to a hybrid setup
  • Health, dental, and vision plans
  • 401(k) with employer matching, for US-based employees
  • Continuous learning opportunities
  • Empowering opportunities for growth in a dynamic entrepreneurial environment


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