Sr Director of Software Engineering - Product & Platform Delivery

Runpod is pioneering the future of AI and machine learning, offering cutting-edge cloud infrastructure for full-stack AI applications. They are seeking a Sr Director of Software Engineering to lead and scale their product-delivery engineering organization, focusing on delivering customer-facing platform features and ensuring high-quality launches across multiple teams.

Responsibilities:

• Own Product Feature Delivery: Lead multiple engineering teams responsible for shipping new features and improving Runpod’s customer experience across console, APIs, and developer workflows. Ensure predictable, high-velocity execution
• Translate Roadmap into Results: Partner with Program management, Product and GTM to shape strategy, define quarterly goals, and convert requirements into clear technical scopes, milestones, and measurable outcomes
• Build a High-Output Org: Hire, mentor, and grow engineering managers and senior ICs. Create a culture of ownership, speed, and craft in a remote-first environment
• Drive Cross-Functional Launch Excellence: Run feature lifecycle processes - discovery support, design/architecture reviews, build phases, QA and rollout plans, release comms, and post-launch iteration
• Continuously Improve Engineering System & Flow: Drive measurable improvements in delivery and reliability through metrics such as cycle time, throughput, defect failure rate, incident frequency, escape defects, adoption, and retention
• Customer-Backed Prioritization: Ensure engineering work aligns to user impact and business value. Constantly leverage customer insights, product analytics, and operational data to refine priorities
• Quality & Velocity Leadership: Balance speed and reliability by improving automated testing, staging/preview environments, observability for product surfaces, and regression prevention
• Architectural Stewardship Without Becoming a Bottleneck: Provide architectural oversight for product systems (backend services, APIs, user workflows, integrations), ensuring scalability and coherence without bottlenecking teams
• Partner with Infrastructure Leadership: Coordinate dependencies cleanly with infra/SRE teams to ensure high quality product delivery

Requirements:

• Engineering Leadership Experience: 7+ years leading software engineering teams including managers and/or multiple squads (80+ person group), with a proven record of shipping customer-facing products
• Product Delivery Strength: Demonstrated ability to take complex roadmap goals from concept through launch, balancing scope, risk, timelines, and quality
• Full-Stack or Backend Product Expertise: 8+ years building SaaS, platforms, or developer-facing products. Comfortable with modern backend stacks and pragmatic architectural decisions
• Remote-First Operating Excellence: Experience building culture, accountability, and momentum across distributed teams
• Process & Metrics Mindset: Strong use of delivery metrics (cycle time, throughput, escape defects, reliability, adoption), and experience improving team flow
• Communication & Collaboration: Clear written and verbal communication, strong stakeholder management, and calm leadership through ambiguity
• Successful completion of a background check
• Experience building cloud or developer platforms, APIs, or workflow-heavy products used by technical customers
• Expertise with AI/ML product surfaces such as job orchestration UX, model deployment flows, observability dashboards, or billing/usage systems
• Track record of scaling product teams in high-growth environments
• Open-source contributions or recognition with communities of developers