Director of Engineering - Platform Services, Developer Platform (Hybrid - Seattle, WA)
About The Position
The Director of Engineering is a technology leader on Nordstrom’s Developer Platform Core Leadership Team. The role sets strategic direction for a broad technical area and uses servant leadership and empathy to empower teams and advance customer experiences and business results. The Developer Platform organization helps engineers focus on business challenges by building and supporting platforms, tools, and AI-powered capabilities across the software development lifecycle. Its shared platform capabilities are operated as products, with adoption, reliability, and developer experience as measures of success. This role leads the teams responsible for Nordstrom’s Kubernetes Platform, Airflow, Kafka, Temporal, and Machine Learning Platform. These capabilities underpin how engineers run services, move data, orchestrate work, and deliver machine learning in production.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field.
- 10 or more years of relevant technology work experience.
- 5 or more years of enterprise team leadership in dynamic, high-scale environments.
- 5 or more years leading and developing teams.
- 3 or more years managing managers.
- Experience leading platform engineering, developer tooling, or infrastructure at scale.
- Working knowledge of Kubernetes and container orchestration, workflow orchestration such as Airflow and Temporal, event streaming with Kafka, and machine learning platforms.
- Experience operating shared platforms as products, including vendor and open-source evaluation, integration, and lifecycle management.
- A record of individual excellence and commitment to developing others; familiarity with modern software development practices and ability to drive outcomes through collaboration.
- Strong customer and stakeholder empathy, with the ability to synthesize differing viewpoints and build alignment amid friction or disagreement.
- Strong negotiation and influencing skills, with the ability to lead through others.
Nice To Haves
- Master’s degree.
Responsibilities
- Lead teams that build, operate, and evolve Kubernetes, Airflow, Kafka, Temporal, and Machine Learning platforms as reliable, self-service products.
- Design organizational structures and talent plans that meet organizational needs and develop future leaders.
- Identify, develop, and coach leaders, and build high-performing, inclusive teams.
- Create new systems and evolve existing ones, balancing reliability, cost, and delivery speed.
- Drive architectural decisions across the function and enterprise, including build-versus-buy choices and platform roadmaps.
- Partner with business and technology leaders to provide technical advice and shape strategy by gathering requirements, mapping them to implementation, and selecting appropriate technology.
- Set product-oriented roadmaps, define success metrics such as adoption, developer productivity, reliability, and cost efficiency, and report results transparently.
- Lead large-scale platform migrations and upgrades while minimizing disruption to dependent teams.
- Champion responsible adoption of AI and automation across engineering workflows.
Benefits
- Medical, vision, and dental coverage.
- Retirement benefits.
- Paid time away, including PTO accruals and holidays.
- Life insurance and disability coverage.
- Merchandise discount.
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) resources.
- Potential eligibility for performance-based incentives or bonuses.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
