# Director of Engineering [REMOTE]

**Company:** [Upbound](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/upbound)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Engineering Management
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** Kubernetes, Crossplane, Cloud Native, Saas Control Planes, APIs, SDKs, Distributed Systems, Marketplaces, Providers, Extensions
**Posted:** 2026-03-09

> Leads engineering teams building and scaling Crossplane-based control planes, marketplaces, and ecosystem integrations for enterprise infrastructure. Requires 10+ years leadership experience with deep Kubernetes and cloud-native expertise.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities

### 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.

## Requirements
- **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.

## Nice-to-Haves
- 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.

## Similar roles

- [Director, Software Engineering](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/1c971431-035e-4519-9120-3d315893266c) - SnapLogic - San Mateo, CA
- [Head of Platform Engineering](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/6bd74d5b-8b79-4457-a826-f9d17e88395b) - Fieldguide - San Francisco, CA - $315k – $345k/yr
- [Director, Field Engineering](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/a23b3546-b743-4d04-8bd3-c10d29869378) - Databricks - Georgia - $218k – $300k/yr
- [Director of Engineering, GRC Program Orchestration](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/4a25e905-5b28-4c70-b108-199a38495194) - Vanta - Remote - $321k – $378k/yr
- [Senior Director, Engineering](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/21e18254-7661-4385-8caf-dde18e778474) - Olo - Remote - $242k – $292k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/39d9c16a-ab39-4ba6-89f1-d9778aaad881
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/39d9c16a-ab39-4ba6-89f1-d9778aaad881