Director of Platform Software Engineering

Leads a platform group; develops strategies and plans that standardize runtimes, APIs, and SDKs across several teams. Accountable for group results and governance adherence; makes operational decisions ensuring compatibility, security, and performance. Sponsors cross-group innovation in resilience, capacity modeling, and interoperability. Communicates with executive leadership on platform health, risk, and adoption.

Career Level - M4

Key Responsibilities

Platform Software Development:

• Define platform strategy for a group, aligning runtimes, SDKs, and integration frameworks to interoperable, multi-tenant standards.

• Govern cross-group compatibility and security controls with SRE/security partners; approve high-risk migrations and deprecations.

• Own group-wide resilience and capacity objectives; institutionalize rollout, canary, and rollback patterns across services.

Software Development and Coding - Design, Testing, and Optimization:

• Defines key elements for leads and/or teams to design multiple software solutions and identify and analyze requirements to ensure alignment with business and organizational goals.

• Applies broad understanding of other areas within the organization to develop and guide new software features and enhancements following design specifications, ensuring accessibility, and to develop documents to clarify software design and code.

• Leads design and specification reviews to drive improvements across multiple projects/programs.

• Utilizes conceptual thinking to direct leads and/or teams for conducting debugging and troubleshooting to identify and fix software issues.

• Directs leads and/or teams to implement software testing (e.g., functional and non-functional), quality assurance processes, software error logging, monitoring, and observability for effective debugging.

• Drives the optimization of design and development practices to improve performance across products and domains, ensuring adherence to organizational goals in execution of business priorities.

• Directs teams in troubleshooting and resolving issues related to application programming interface (API) functionality and integration.

• Directs teams to implement API versioning, lifecycle, and interoperability strategies.

Software Architecture - Software System Structural Design:

• Directs teams to design and develop software, systems, and services.

• Coaches managers to provide technical guidance and domain expertise in software architecture decisions and best practices.

• Utilizes conceptual thinking to direct teams in conducting periodic reviews and ensures adherence to architectural standards.

• Collaborates with cross-functional teams and stakeholders within and outside the organization to align and build software architecture with business and/or customer goals and priorities in focus.

• Directs teams to implement performance optimization and scalability strategies in software design.

• Defines processes and approaches to conduct regular technology research and evaluation for architectural enhancements.

Issue/Defect Collaboration - Software Products Support:

• Collaborates with stakeholders within and outside of organization, including executive leadership, to understand customer issues and align solutions.

• Directs teams to provide technical guidance and appropriately prioritize support to customers regarding reported issues.

• Leads teams and sets direction to advocate for customers' interests and suggests product enhancements based on feedback.

• Influences multiple teams to ensure customer satisfaction through timely resolution of issues and effective communication.

• Directs the implementation of training for customer issue and/or defect handling processes.

• Leads the investigation and troubleshooting of complex and broadly reaching product maintenance issues to ensure customer agreement on short- and long-term solutions.

Practices and Standards Compliance - Security and Compliance:

• Collaborates with teams and leadership to establish, follow, and enforce documented security criteria, evolving/dynamic industry best practices and processes, and coding standards.

• Ensures clarity on key elements and objectives for adherence to broad acceptance criteria to impact development processes in the organization.

• Implements complex secure software development practices to prevent security vulnerabilities that affect the organization.

Development Operations - System Maintenance:

• Defines key elements for teams to perform periodic maintenance and testing operations for systems that require upgrading or patching (e.g., for critical vulnerabilities).

• Ensures teams are aware of and adhere to service contract, terms, and conditions.

• Directs teams to proactively evolve standard operating procedures (SOP) for development and to drive improvements, ensures automation, testing, and debugging of systems to ensure service/product availability, health, support, and reliability.

Core Responsibilities

Planning & Execution:

• Oversees and guides multiple teams on managing complex projects or initiatives, monitoring timelines, deliverables, and budgets when applicable to ensure strategic objectives are met. Serves as a role model for appropriately delegating work, setting priorities, and ensuring alignment with business needs. Coaches others on adjusting resources or project timelines in anticipation of business changes.

Collaboration & Partnership:

• Role models leading cross-functional collaborative efforts to ensure alignment of expectations and strategic objectives. Empowers team to build and maintain partnerships with business leaders, stakeholders, and/or customers to address barriers and contribute to organizational success. Drives transparency and inclusivity by modeling actively seeking, listening to, and leveraging diverse perspectives.

Problem Solving:

• Shares problem-solving strategies across teams, providing oversight on complex operational and/or technical issues, as needed. Coaches teams on analyzing highly complex data and/or information to identify solutions to ambiguous issues and provides direction on identifying root causes to prevent recurrence of issues.

Continuous Learning:

• Pursues strategic learning opportunities to maintain expertise and apply best practices at the organizational level. Creates opportunities for team members and leaders to build their expertise in new areas, coaching them to build innovative skills. Identifies skill gap trends across the organization, and upholds a culture that places significant emphasis on sharing knowledge and pursuing learning opportunities that advance the organization. Evaluates efficiency of learning strategies and recommends adjustments as needed.

Continuous Improvement:

• Empowers team to own the development and implementation of ideas that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, protocols, and workflows across the department. Coaches teams to gain buy-in for ideas and to seek feedback on approaches and methods for continued improvement. Prioritizes and reviews the roadmap of improvement initiatives to ensure alignment with strategic direction and maximize return on investments.

Performance and Development:

• Serves as a role model for driving performance across teams through tailored feedback and coaching in alignment with performance management processes, guidelines, and expectations. Drives consistency in the application of talent development procedures and socializes performance expectations across the organization. Ensures that individual development goals are aligned with organizational strategic initiatives. Collaborates with HR to implement talent strategy through hiring and promotion processes.