Director, Production and Infrastructure Engineering

Red Cell Partners • Seattle, WA

1d • $240,000 - $290,000

About The Position

Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm that builds and invests in technology-led companies in healthcare, cyber, and national security. Trase Systems provides an end-to-end platform for deploying, managing, and optimizing AI in enterprise environments, with a focus on reducing the complexity and risks of AI adoption.

Trase is seeking an engineering leader to build and lead its Production and Infrastructure Engineering organization. The role manages engineers across DevOps, SRE, DevEx, and MLOps, as well as a dedicated support team, and is accountable for performance, development, and delivery across these functions. The leader should have a strong infrastructure and software engineering foundation and remain technically engaged through design and code reviews, investigations, and pairing when needed, while developing technical leads and delegating implementation.

The position requires an adaptable leader who can organize ambiguous work, adjust plans as priorities change, align different technical disciplines around outcomes, and help the team deliver consistently. Responsibilities span team development, cross-functional planning and delivery, production and release readiness, operational improvements, customer support, and collaboration with Product, Platform, Applied AI, and Security/GRC.

Salary range: $240,000–$290,000, based on experience, skills, and other factors. Some travel is required. Certain national security assignments may require U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a security clearance, depending on confirmed customer and contract requirements.

Requirements

• 10+ years of relevant engineering experience, including 5+ years of direct engineering people management, or equivalent demonstrated experience.
• Experience building teams, coaching platform or infrastructure engineers, managing performance, and delivering through technical leads; director-level candidates should demonstrate leadership across multiple engineering functions.
• Experience leading teams with different technical specialties and seniority levels, with strong planning, prioritization, delegation, stakeholder communication, and conflict-resolution skills.
• Strong technical foundation in at least one major cloud platform, such as GCP, AWS, or Azure, with practical experience in Kubernetes, containers, networking, identity, and production operations.
• Practical experience with Terraform, Git-based development workflows, GitOps, and CI/CD, including guiding repeatable environments, configuration control, and reliable deployments.
• Strong background building and shipping production software, with working depth across backend services, APIs, data stores, and full-stack integration; able to review code and designs, reason about application failures, and pair to unblock delivery.
• Experience leading production delivery and support, including reliability, incident response, release and change management, and collaboration on automated testing and end-to-end readiness.
• Demonstrated ability to structure ambiguous work, learn unfamiliar technical domains, and make timely decisions with incomplete information while maintaining team focus across people leadership, delivery, and technical discussions.
• Experience managing technical commitments and escalations with internal or external customers and translating needs into feasible priorities and delivery plans.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with MLOps, model serving, or operating AI/ML and agent workloads, with the ability to learn from and partner with specialists.
• Experience supporting customer-managed environments, multiple cloud providers, or enterprise deployments with complex integration needs.
• Experience in national security, federal, regulated, or other security-sensitive environments, including partnering with Security/GRC on engineering requirements.
• Experience scaling an engineering organization or building a new team or operating function in a fast-changing company.
• U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a security clearance may be required for certain national security assignments, depending on confirmed customer and contract requirements.

Responsibilities

• Build and develop the team through hiring, onboarding, one-on-ones, career development, and performance management; coach junior engineers, develop technical leads, and set clear expectations for senior specialists.
• Set shared priorities and responsibilities across infrastructure, reliability, developer experience, testing, and application delivery; delegate execution, resolve disagreements, and hold engineers accountable for agreed decisions and commitments.
• Lead sprint planning, backlog grooming, capacity planning, and delivery reviews with technical leads and TPMs; turn ambiguous goals into actionable work, manage dependencies and scope, balance roadmap work with incidents and customer support, and communicate tradeoffs when plans change.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership through design and code reviews, technical questions, investigations, and pairing when the team is blocked; connect application behavior with deployment and operational concerns.
• Make reliability, release and change management, QA, and end-to-end validation part of delivery; assign owners, establish readiness criteria with feature teams, and ensure testing, operational documentation, and rollback plans inform release decisions.
• Lead improvements to cloud infrastructure, automation, CI/CD, observability, on-call readiness, and incident response; prioritize work that reduces recurring incidents and developer friction, and use delivery, reliability, recovery, and support metrics to guide investment.
• Manage a dedicated cross-functional Red Cell Partners support team of full-stack engineers, DevOps engineers, and a TPM; align priorities, staffing, delivery commitments, and support expectations with stakeholders, resolve dependencies, and maintain escalation paths.
• Partner with Product, Platform, Applied AI, and Security/GRC on delivery priorities, operational readiness, and applicable customer requirements; surface risks, secure decisions, and ensure engineering commitments are followed through.

Benefits

• 100% employer-paid comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and their families.
• Paid maternity and paternity leave for 14 weeks at normal pay.
• Unlimited PTO, with management approval.
• Professional development and continued learning opportunities.
• Optional 401(k), FSA, and equity incentives.
• Mental health benefits through Tara Mind.
• Cost-effective GLP-1 solutions through Crux.
• Career-track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement as the firm grows.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed