Director, Engineering - API & Enablement Platforms

Levi Strauss & Co.•San Francisco, CA

2d•Remote

About The Position

Levi Strauss & Co. is seeking a bold, strategic, and technically exceptional Director of Engineering to lead the strategy and evolution of its API and event streaming platforms. This role is crucial for establishing a self-service foundation that empowers squads to manage their connectivity outcomes and for driving platform capabilities essential for operating AI at scale. Reporting to the Senior Director, Platform Engineering & Shared Services, the position focuses on two key areas: transforming the organization towards a squad-led enablement model and pioneering next-generation platform capabilities for an AI-driven future. The ideal candidate is a platform engineering leader who thinks in products, leads through influence, and is passionate about both organizational transformation and technical innovation.

Requirements

Engineering leader with 10+ years of experience, including 5 years of people management.
Track record of building platform capabilities at scale.
Experience leading organizational transformation or operating model changes with significant impacts to architecture.
Deep expertise in enterprise API management and event streaming concepts and patterns (REST, OpenAPI, GraphQL, gRPC).
Hands-on experience with platforms such as Mulesoft, Confluent Kafka, Apigee, or Cloud Pub/Sub.
Experience designing cloud-native API and event streaming architectures across GCP and/or Azure environments.
Ability to navigate multi-cloud realities and make platform-appropriate tooling decisions.
Experience integrating with cloud data and AI services (e.g., BigQuery, Vertex AI, Azure OpenAI).
Demonstrated experience in how API and event streaming platforms enable AI strategy, including LLM gateway architecture, AI-native API patterns, multi-vendor AI governance, and agentic patterns.
Proven track record of building and evolving platform capabilities.
Experience leading change management and accountability model transitions within engineering organizations.
Ability to use data and metrics to interpret monitoring, derive recommendations, and drive actions.
Comprehensive understanding of Agile and DevOps principles, including DevSecOps and zero-trust security models.

Nice To Haves

Experience with domain-driven design.
Experience with agentic patterns including tool-calling APIs and event-driven agent triggers.

Responsibilities

Lead the transition from a centralized model to a squad-led enablement model.
Build base platforms, patterns, and self-service tooling for squads to own their API and event streaming outcomes.
Up-skill teams on API-first and event-driven practices, define clear accountability frameworks, and provide change management leadership.
Develop and deliver core services for the enabling team, including setting API-first and event-driven design standards.
Build a developer portal and patterns library to facilitate adherence to standards.
Provide internal consulting and subject-matter expertise, including on domain-driven design.
Own governance covering API lifecycle management, schema management, security, and AI traffic governance.
Lead the API Solutions & Gateway and Event Streaming squads to establish a continuously evolving portfolio of API and event streaming capabilities.
Drive the roadmap from the current stack toward cloud-native platforms, primarily in a GCP, multi-cloud environment.
Deliver capabilities serving both operational and AI/ML workloads.
Position API and event streaming platforms as foundational AI infrastructure and pioneer new capabilities for AI at scale.
Own the strategy and roadmap for an LLM Gateway, MCP and A2A gateway capabilities, and the event streaming layer for AI systems.
Champion agentic readiness by designing API contracts and event schemas for AI agent consumption, enabling multi-agent orchestration patterns, and driving self-healing platform capabilities.
Lead DevSecOps best practices, including automated testing and zero trust security.
Inspire and lead teams, cultivating high-trust partnerships across Engineering, Product, Technical Product, Program, and Commercial teams.
Foster an inclusive, collaborative culture as a leader of people.