Director, Software Engineering — Automation Platform & Apps

LinkedIn•Mountain View, CA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director of Automation Platform & Apps is a senior leadership role within LinkedIn's Developer Productivity & Experience organization. This role leads the team responsible for building the platform and tooling that puts AI to work across LinkedIn's R&D ecosystem — both by deeply integrating industry AI agents with LinkedIn's internal systems, data, and developer workflows, and by providing the foundational platform on which all internally developed AI agents are built and operated. The team also develops LinkedIn-specific automation applications that drive productivity at scale across the company's R&D organization. This is a high-impact, high-visibility role at the intersection of developer experience, AI tooling, and platform engineering — shaping how thousands of engineers at LinkedIn collaborate with AI every day.

Requirements

BA/BS degree in Computer Science or a related field
7+ years in engineering leadership, with experience leading platform or developer productivity focused teams
5+ years of experience building and operating large-scale developer platforms or internal tooling
4+ years of experience building software that meaningfully reduces developer toil and improves engineering velocity

Nice To Haves

Hands-on development background in programming or scripting languages such as Python, Go, Java, or TypeScript.
Experience building platforms or integrations with AI/ML systems, LLM-based agents, or developer automation tooling.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams.
The ability to balance business needs, a sense of urgency, conflicting constraints, and shipping high-quality, pragmatic solutions in a fast-moving environment.
Experience leading large engineering teams of 40+.
Data-driven decision making using developer productivity and platform adoption metrics.
Pragmatic tradeoff analysis between platform flexibility, security, and developer experience.
Cross-org technical leadership and stakeholder alignment.
Strong engineering management, coaching, and talent development.
AI agent integration and orchestration platforms
Developer productivity tooling and internal platform engineering
Designing and operating self-service platforms at large scale
LLM application development and agentic workflow design
API and ecosystem integration with complex, large-scale internal systems
Observability and health signals for AI-powered developer tooling

Responsibilities

Define and own the strategy and roadmap for LinkedIn's Automation Platform — the foundational infrastructure that enables internal teams to build, deploy, and operate AI agents reliably and at scale.
Drive the integration of industry AI agents with LinkedIn's engineering ecosystem, including internal developer tooling, data systems, APIs, and workflows, ensuring these agents are LinkedIn-aware and immediately productive.
Lead the design and development of LinkedIn-specific automation applications that meaningfully accelerate developer productivity across the engineering organization.
Partner broadly across engineering, product, and infrastructure teams to understand developer needs and translate them into platform capabilities that are self-service, scalable, and easy to adopt.
Establish best practices, standards, and guardrails for how AI agents interact with LinkedIn's production systems, ensuring safety, reliability, and appropriate access controls.
Act as a role model and coach for engineers and managers by setting clear expectations, providing candid feedback, and fostering accountability and growth.
Collaborate with senior leadership to co-develop a long-term vision for AI-powered developer productivity aligned with LinkedIn's product and technology strategy.
Develop and operationalize metrics and dashboards to measure platform adoption, developer productivity impact, and the effectiveness of automation initiatives.
Serve as a domain expert by staying current on the rapidly evolving landscape of AI agents, developer tooling, and automation platforms, and applying those insights to LinkedIn's strategy.
Hire, develop, and retain high-performing engineering leaders and engineers across a range of experience levels.
Lead complex, cross-organizational initiatives by aligning stakeholders, managing risk, making informed tradeoffs, and delivering high-quality outcomes on time.