Senior Director, Software Engineering

Roku•San Jose, CA

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

Software engineering is at an inflection point — and Enterprise Engineering at Roku sits right at the center of it. Applications are increasingly built to plug into AI platforms — exposing their capabilities as services for agents rather than standing alone as siloed apps — and the once-clear lines between engineering disciplines are blurring, rewarding versatile engineers who can work across the stack and own outcomes end to end. At the same time, AI is raising the bar on what a lean engineering organization can deliver. Roku is seeking a Director of Software Engineering to lead the organization that builds the custom applications, integrations, enterprise data, AI and agentic capabilities, and productivity platforms that power how the company runs. This is a senior leadership role: you’ll set the technical vision, shape our architecture for an AI-native future, and make Enterprise Engineering’s systems agent-ready — all while championing engineering excellence in quality, security, and speed. Reporting to the VP of Enterprise Engineering, you will lead a global organization across teams in the U.S., UK, and India. You’ll own the software engineering organization building Roku’s custom enterprise applications, integrations, and enterprise data; Productivity Engineering, the platforms and workflows that shape how thousands of employees work each day; and enterprise AI enablement — the AI-enabled capabilities that let our systems and our people operate with far greater leverage. The ideal candidate is a builder-architect and a transformation leader. You have deep, current expertise in AI and software architecture and a clear point of view on where software is heading, and you have repeatedly reshaped teams and lifted engineering standards to meet that direction. You care as much about how work gets done — the architecture, the rigor, the ways of working — as about what gets shipped.

Requirements

15+ years building and leading software engineering teams, including significant experience leading managers and/or senior engineers in an organization of scale.
Deep, current expertise in cloud architecture and software engineering, with the judgment to set architectural direction and go as deep as a problem requires — whether as a hands-on architect or leading through strong managers.
Personal, current fluency with the agentic engineering toolchain — conversational AI and agentic coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) used across the full software development lifecycle — with the judgment to drive an agent, verify its output, and lead by example. Depth in LLM-based applications, agentic workflows, MCP integration, and eval-driven development.
A track record of raising engineering standards in an existing organization — modernizing architecture, embedding secure-by-design practices, and improving quality, rigor, and agility.
Conviction and experience in organizational design, including reshaping teams around outcomes and evolving operating models.
Experience with enterprise or internal platforms and the governance, security, and compliance that come with them; large-scale enterprise system modernization is a strong plus.
Change leadership: a demonstrated ability to move an organization to new, AI-enabled ways of working and to protect strategic capacity against the gravity of run-the-business work.
Exceptional executive presence, a data-driven mindset, and the ability to influence senior stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

At Roku, we don’t just use AI, we work with it. AI agents and smart tools help power drafts, analysis, and repetitive workflows, while our people bring direction, judgment, and accountability. We’re looking for curious, adaptable builders who can show how they’ve used AI or automation to move faster, raise the bar, and scale their impact.
We value your AI skills if you’ve built fluency across the agentic engineering toolchain — coding harnesses like Claude Code or Cursor, MCP servers, custom skills, or agent frameworks — and you can describe projects where you shipped real work with these tools. You know how to drive an agent, verify its output, and ramp on an unfamiliar codebase with an agent helping you.

Responsibilities

Set the technical vision and standards for the software engineering organization that builds Roku’s custom enterprise applications, integrations, and enterprise data.
Advance our architecture and engineering practices — driving cloud-native design, strong engineering and security discipline, and fast, reliable delivery.
Drive our enterprise AI enablement strategy — building the reusable foundations for agent-ready systems (identity-aware MCP services, reusable skills, eval practices, and a governed context layer) and enabling teams across the organization to build, adopt, and operate AI capabilities themselves.
Lead the organization’s shift to AI-first engineering: drive team-wide AI adoption, create the psychological safety for teams to experiment and learn, redesign workflows around AI rather than bolting it on, and establish standards for the quality and accountability of AI-assisted work.
Reshape team topology around outcomes as the boundaries between engineering disciplines blur, evolving the org toward versatile, product-aligned teams.
Build, coach, and uplift a high-performing, geographically distributed engineering team, and serve as a thought partner to executive leadership.
Own Productivity Engineering: the platforms, workflows, and tools that shape how thousands of employees collaborate, execute, and make decisions.
Partner on the architecture and execution of major enterprise tentpole initiatives that span multiple systems and teams.
Operate with the governance, security, audit, and compliance discipline (including SOX) that enterprise systems require.