Director of Engineering - Platform Services, Developer Platform (Hybrid - Seattle, WA)

Nordstrom•Seattle, WA

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director of Engineering leads teams within Nordstrom Technology’s Developer Platform organization. The organization helps engineers focus on business challenges by providing shared platforms, tools, and AI-powered capabilities across the software development lifecycle. It treats its platforms as products, measuring success through adoption, reliability, and developer experience. This leader is responsible for the teams supporting the Kubernetes Platform, Airflow, Kafka, Temporal, and the Machine Learning Platform—the foundations engineers use to run services, move data, orchestrate work, and deploy machine learning in production. The role sets strategic direction, makes architectural and organizational decisions, and partners with business and technology leaders to align platform capabilities with business strategy. It also develops leaders and inclusive teams, manages platform roadmaps and success metrics, leads migrations and upgrades, and champions responsible use of AI and automation.

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 such as Kafka, and machine learning platforms.
Experience running shared platforms as products, including vendor and open-source evaluation, integration, and lifecycle management.
A record of individual excellence and a demonstrated commitment to helping others excel.
Familiarity with modern software development practices and an ability to drive outcomes through collaboration.
Strong customer and stakeholder empathy, with the ability to synthesize differing perspectives and drive alignment amid friction or disagreement.
Strong negotiation and influencing skills, with the ability to lead through others.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree preferred.

Responsibilities

Lead teams that build, operate, and evolve the Kubernetes Platform, Airflow, Kafka, Temporal, and Machine Learning Platform as reliable, self-service products.
Design organizational structures and talent plans that meet organizational needs and build a bench of future leaders.
Identify, develop, and coach leaders; build high-performing, inclusive teams.
Create new systems and evolve existing ones, balancing reliability, cost, and speed of delivery.
Drive architectural decisions across the function and enterprise, including build-versus-buy decisions 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 technologies.
Set product-oriented roadmaps, define success metrics such as adoption, developer productivity, reliability, and cost efficiency, and report on them transparently.
Lead large-scale platform migrations and upgrades with minimal disruption to dependent teams.
Champion responsible adoption of AI and automation across engineering workflows.