Director of Engineering, Internal Platforms & Developer Experience

Collectors•Los Angeles, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Collectors is seeking a Director of Internal Platforms and Developer Experience to join their Platform Engineering team. This role will partner with the broader Product and Tech organization to build foundational systems that engineers rely on for building, deploying, and running applications. The Director will report to the VP of Engineering, Information Security and Platforms. Remote or hybrid candidates will be considered. If located within a 1-hour commute of an office, frequent on-site presence will be required. The company is transforming the collecting experience with technology, making complex research analytics accessible to all collectors. The engineering mission is to democratize technology while promoting innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning, with a commitment to cybersecurity, risk, and privacy best practices.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in software or infrastructure engineering.
5+ years managing engineering teams.
At least 2+ years leading managers or multiple teams simultaneously.
Deeply technical with a strategic mindset.
Expertise in modern infrastructure and platform tooling, with hands-on experience across cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), container orchestration (k8s), CI/CD systems (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform/Crossplane), and observability stacks.
Experience operating with a platform-as-a-product philosophy and building internal tooling and self-service platforms that measurably improve developer productivity and satisfaction.
Fluency in the AI-assisted development landscape, understanding the current ecosystem of AI coding assistants, code generation tools, and LLM-based development frameworks.
Experience designing guardrails and policies around emerging technology, particularly AI.
Strong cross-functional partnership skills, building trust with product engineering, architecture, security, and business stakeholders.
Experience managing cloud infrastructure budgets, vendor relationships, and capacity planning at scale.
Disciplined approach to headcount planning and resource allocation.
Effective communicator who can articulate platform strategy and technical trade-offs to various audiences.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading or contributing to organizational strategies for adopting AI thoughtfully.

Responsibilities

Define and drive the platform engineering strategy across infrastructure, developer experience, and AI enablement, ensuring alignment with broader organizational goals and technology roadmaps.
Lead and develop multiple engineering teams responsible for core infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, cloud services, and the internal developer platform, fostering a culture of reliability, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Own the vision for developer experience, ensuring internal teams have access to well-documented, self-service tooling and platforms that reduce friction and accelerate the path from code to production.
Establish and oversee AI enablement strategies, including the evaluation, integration, and governance of AI-assisted development tools and frameworks, ensuring teams can adopt AI capabilities responsibly and effectively.
Define guardrails and governance frameworks for AI adoption, partnering with security, legal, and compliance stakeholders to create policies that balance innovation velocity with risk management, data privacy, and responsible use.
Set standards for platform reliability, scalability, and security, driving investment in observability, incident response, infrastructure-as-code, and capacity planning to support the organization's growth.
Partner cross-functionally with product engineering, security, data, and architecture leaders to ensure platform capabilities meet current and emerging needs across the organization.
Champion a platform-as-a-product mindset, using internal feedback loops, adoption metrics, and developer satisfaction data to continuously iterate on the platforms and services your teams provide.