Director of Engineering

About the role

Leading Core Infrastructure at Motive requires a hands-on executive engineer who translates ambiguous, high impact challenges into clear execution plans for scalability, reliability, and platform abstractions. You will own the Core Infrastructure and Operations Engineering domain at Motive, guiding product evolution while balancing long term architecture with immediate business demands from the center of critical technology decisions and executive dialogue. This role demands you orchestrate a high performing engineering squad focused on core platform systems that serve the entire company, defining multi quarter platform initiatives that elevate reliability and product utility. You will operate at the nexus of product and infrastructure, translating business intent into robust technical outcomes while elevating engineering quality, operational excellence, and execution standards across the platform organization. Close collaboration with product and engineering leaders will shape infrastructure as a product, balancing architectural integrity with delivery velocity and pragmatic tradeoffs. You will interface directly with vendors, partners, and cost governance teams to manage relationships and optimize strategic spend across the technology footprint. Success in this role hinges on championing AI fluency by evaluating, integrating, and governing LLM and AI platforms such as AWS Bedrock, Anthropic, and OpenAI for engineering and operational use cases.

Key facts

What you'll do

Define and own the roadmap for core infrastructure and platform services, translating ambiguous business problems into scalable, reliable technical strategies.

Architect and govern multi-account AWS environments including VPC, IAM, and multi-account strategies, ensuring security, compliance, and cost optimization at scale.

Elevate platform reliability through rigorous SLO definition, incident management, on call processes, and rigorous postmortem practices that drive measurable improvements.

Partner with product and engineering leaders to treat infrastructure as a product, managing roadmaps, stakeholder communications, and adoption metrics for platform services.

Drive operational excellence by implementing robust observability, monitoring, and alerting strategies that provide actionable insights across the technology stack.

Evaluate, integrate, and govern enterprise LLM and AI platforms such as AWS Bedrock, Anthropic, and OpenAI to enhance engineering productivity and operational workflows.

Lead high-performing, cross-functional engineering squads, providing technical leadership, mentorship, and career development for senior engineers and staff.

Collaborate with vendors, partners, and cost governance teams to optimize technology spend, manage relationships, and ensure alignment with financial objectives.

Build and maintain deep expertise in databases and data platforms, including OLTP, analytics, and ML/AI infrastructure, ensuring performance and scalability for critical workloads.

Foster a culture of accountability, ownership, and collaboration across distributed teams, enabling effective execution across complex internal platforms and global initiatives.

Requirements

Bring 12+ years of total experience in software or infrastructure engineering, including 5+ years leading Infra, SRE, or ops organizations and managing managers.

Hold a degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience that demonstrates deep technical foundations and problem-solving capabilities.

Demonstrate deep AWS expertise at scale, including mastery of VPC, IAM, multi-account strategies, core services, observability, and cost optimization.

Show a proven record running high reliability platforms, including SLOs, incidents, on call rotations, and postmortems that drive meaningful change.

Exhibit clear communication skills to manage escalations with executive level stakeholders and translate technical complexity into actionable insights.

Have experience running infrastructure as a product, including owning roadmaps, stakeholder communications, adoption strategies, and lifecycle management.

Possess strong skills with databases and data platforms, including OLTP, analytics, data platforms, and ML/AI infrastructure, with hands-on experience.

Collaborate effectively across functions with a strong sense of ownership, accountability, and the ability to influence without direct authority in matrixed organizations.

Maintain high AI fluency to evaluate, integrate, and govern enterprise LLM and AI platforms such as AWS Bedrock, Anthropic, and OpenAI for engineering and operational use.

Nice to have

Background in B2B SaaS or other high reliability domains such as payments, logistics, safety, or similar is valued.

Experience leading global, distributed teams across multiple time zones is a strong asset for coordinating cross-regional platform initiatives.

Practical notes

Employment eligibility requires authorization to receive and access commodities and technologies controlled under U.S. Export Administration Regulations.

Interviews or new-hire training sessions may be held in person at one of our global offices.