Upbound is building the control plane for the modern enterprise. As the company behind Crossplane, the open-source CNCF project that extends Kubernetes into an AI-native cloud control plane. Upbound enables organizations to compose, manage, and operate infrastructure and services through declarative, programmable control planes. Upbound Cloud delivers hosted, multi-tenant control planes that power platform engineering teams at scale. Our vision extends beyond infrastructure management into an AI-native Control Fabric - where control planes become programmable, extensible, and ecosystem-driven. As we scale into the next phase of growth,
we are hiring a Sr. Engineering Manager to lead our Control Planes & Ecosystem Group. As Director of Control Planes & Ecosystem, you will own the strategy and execution for the customer-facing control plane experience across:
- Crossplane: Upstream work and contributions for the open source Crossplane Project
- Upbound Crossplane: Upbound's Enterprise Distribution of Crossplane
- Upbound Marketplace: The place where Users and Customers discover content
- Upbound Official Providers and Extensions: Development and maintenance of Providers, Add-Ons, Functions, and more
- Partner Integrations: Development of Extensions with third party partners
This is a senior leadership role responsible for scaling teams, defining long-term architecture strategy, and shaping how enterprises adopt programmable control planes through a thriving ecosystem.
You will lead multiple managers and high-performing engineering teams, driving cohesion across product and user experiences.
In this role, you will...Control Plane & Enterprise Strategy- Help define and drive the long-term vision for hosted control planes and ecosystem extensibility.
- Ensure Marketplace, UXP, APIs, and Extensions operate as a cohesive control plane experience.
- Shape how platform engineering teams compose infrastructure through Crossplane-powered abstractions.
- Drive reliability, scalability, and production-grade control planes at scale.
Ecosystem Leadership- Own the strategy for Upbound Marketplace as the distribution layer for Crossplane providers, extensions, and control plane building blocks.
- Grow and strengthen the provider ecosystem (ISVs, cloud providers, platform partners).
- Enable extension frameworks that allow customers and partners to build on top of Upbound control planes.
- Ensure ecosystem experiences are intuitive, secure, and enterprise-ready.
Organizational Leadership- Lead managers and managers-of-managers across multiple teams.
- Scale engineering org structure to support product velocity and ecosystem expansion.
- Establish operational rigor: roadmap planning, delivery predictability, uptime SLAs, and production excellence.
- Foster a culture of ownership, innovation, and deep technical craftsmanship.
Cross-Functional Influence- Partner closely with Product, GTM, Alliances, and Customer Success to align ecosystem strategy with revenue goals.
- Translate enterprise customer needs into scalable control plane capabilities.
- Represent engineering in executive-level conversations around ecosystem expansion and AI-native infrastructure.
You are a good fit if you have...- 10+ years of engineering leadership experience, including leading managers of managers.
- 5+ years building or scaling cloud-native, infrastructure, or platform engineering products.
- Deep familiarity with Kubernetes and the Cloud Native ecosystem.
- Experience building SaaS control planes or distributed systems at scale.
- Strong understanding of APIs, SDKs, declarative systems, and extensibility frameworks.
- Proven experience growing ecosystem-driven products (marketplaces, providers, plugins, or integrations).
- Track record of delivering reliable production services with strong uptime and performance standards.
- Ability to operate strategically while diving deep technically.
It is a plus if...- Experience with Crossplane and/or Kubernetes.
- Background in platform engineering or internal developer platforms.
- Experience building multi-tenant control plane architectures.
- Startup experience in high-growth infrastructure companies.
- Passion for programmable infrastructure and AI-native systems.
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