Director of Software Engineering (Availability Engineering)

Quick Facts

• Role: Director of Software Engineering (Availability Engineering)

Description

Lead end-to-end engineering programs for availability engineering services that gate change and strengthen reliability across the company’s release lifecycle. Own the technical direction, program execution, product strategy, and the people building and operating these systems—driving adoption across thousands of service teams with measurable improvements in availability. Use data, AI, and distributed-systems approaches to move from incidents handled to incidents prevented.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture, reliability, scalability, and security of services that gate change company-wide
• Set operational excellence standards: SLOs, on-call health, incident response, PRB/CAR follow-through, and technical debt management
• Apply AI and automation where they measurably improve availability outcomes
• Challenge designs, spot risk early, and represent the portfolio in architecture reviews
• Lead and grow engineering teams (hire, develop, retain; build high-ownership culture)
• Communicate clearly with executives and partner organizations; give direct, timely feedback and manage performance fairly
• Own each program end to end: problem definition → implementation → rollout → adoption → operationalization → measured outcomes (including work outside the team’s codebase)
• Define success metrics before work begins and report progress to engineering leadership
• Drive cross-organizational engineering efforts (Release, Change, Incident, Problem) and manage dependencies proactively
• Run predictable planning and execution: roadmaps, milestones, and crisp status reporting
• Own change management for launches: communications, enablement, runbooks, support channels, and adoption
• Act as accountable product owner for the portfolio: internal customers, pain points, and success criteria
• Set multi-year vision and roadmaps tied to the company’s availability strategy
• Prioritize by availability impact and maintainability; make clear tradeoff decisions
• Close the loop after launch: instrument outcomes, gather feedback, and iterate

Requirements

• Related technical degree or equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading engineering teams
• Proven track record owning large, cross-organizational programs end to end
• Deep experience with large-scale distributed systems and microservices; strong grounding in reliability engineering, SRE practices, and incident management
• Product sense for defining roadmaps and prioritizing by customer/business impact; driving adoption of internal platforms
• Program management skills: planning, dependency and risk management, and executive-level status reporting
• Experience hiring, mentoring, and developing engineers and engineering managers; building high-ownership cultures
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to influence senior leaders without direct authority
• Deep knowledge of software engineering best practices (coding standards, code reviews, SCM, CI/CD, testing, operations)
• Experience with Agile development methodologies and short release cycles

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits and resources to support work-life balance
• AI agents to accelerate impact
• Time off programs; medical, dental, vision, and mental health support
• Paid parental leave; life and disability insurance
• 401(k) and employee stock purchasing program