Director of Platform Engineering

Episode Six•Austin, TX

About The Position

Episode Six is hiring a Director of Platform Engineering based in Austin, Texas. The DevOps organization includes Platform Operations, which runs production environments day to day, and Platform Engineering, which designs, builds, and evolves the infrastructure and automation behind them. This hands-on leadership role leads the Platform Engineering team and sets the technical direction of the platform powering payments for banks and fintechs worldwide. The Director will lead and develop DevOps engineers while owning the roadmap, architecture, and quality of the company’s in-house infrastructure-as-code and automation. The role involves adapting the platform to client, market, regional, technological, and regulatory needs; keeping infrastructure and toolchains current; managing infrastructure costs; and improving CI/CD and release tooling for hosted and on-premises clients. The role also leads investigations of complex infrastructure issues, including working with Platform Operations during escalated incidents and driving root-cause analysis through to lasting fixes. The Director establishes engineering practices and partners with Platform Operations, Software Engineering, Information Security, and Compliance to ensure the platform is reliable, secure, auditable, and compliant. The position represents Platform Engineering to clients, prospects, auditors, and partners, reports team and platform outcomes to senior leadership, participates in an escalation rotation, and travels occasionally.

Requirements

At least 8 years of experience in DevOps, infrastructure, platform, or site reliability engineering.
At least 5 years leading engineering work, including at least 3 years in a people-leadership role.
Deep, hands-on experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and configuration management tools; Terraform and Ansible are preferred.
Experience scripting in Python and Bash.
Extensive experience operating production workloads on public cloud; AWS is strongly preferred.
Strong experience running Kubernetes and containerized workloads in production.
Strong Linux background, including supporting Java applications on Linux.
A track record of proactively identifying risks and opportunities and taking clear ownership through resolution.
Demonstrated ability to lead troubleshooting of complex, cross-cutting infrastructure issues under pressure while keeping stakeholders informed.
Experience managing and optimizing cloud infrastructure costs at scale.
Experience working in a regulated environment such as financial services.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including explaining technical trade-offs to engineers, executives, and clients.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Authorization to work in the U.S. or Canada; employment sponsorship is not available.

Nice To Haves

Experience in payments, card issuing, or a growth-stage fintech.
Experience operating multi-tenant platforms across multiple regions and regulatory jurisdictions.
Experience supporting hybrid cloud or on-premises client deployments.
Familiarity with payment HSMs, particularly the Utimaco Atalla AT1000 series.

Responsibilities

Lead, mentor, and grow a team of DevOps engineers, setting priorities, engineering standards, and development paths.
Own the roadmap, architecture, and quality of the in-house Infrastructure-as-Code tooling, including Terraform, Ansible, Python, and related tools, used to operate platform instances, Kubernetes clusters, and AWS infrastructure.
Adapt the platform to requirements arising from new clients, markets, regions, technology changes, and the payments industry, including data residency and local regulatory expectations.
Plan and drive upgrades across Kubernetes, operating systems, databases, and the build toolchain; retire legacy components and manage technical debt.
Own infrastructure cost management, including cost visibility, forecasting, and ongoing optimization with Finance.
Lead technical investigations of complex infrastructure issues, work with Platform Operations during escalated incidents, and drive root-cause analysis to lasting engineering fixes.
Continuously improve CI/CD and release tooling for software releases to hosted and on-premises clients.
Establish and uphold team engineering practices, including code review, infrastructure-code testing, change management, and documentation.
Partner with Platform Operations, Software Engineering, Information Security, and Compliance to maintain a reliable, secure, auditable, and compliant platform.
Represent Platform Engineering with clients, prospects, auditors, and partners, including technical due diligence and client onboarding.
Report team objectives, delivery, platform health, and infrastructure spend to senior leadership.
Participate in an escalation rotation and travel occasionally to client sites, E6 offices, or company events.