Senior Director of Engineering, Platform Engineering
DroneBase
*We are only open to candidates who currently reside in Boston or the San Francisco Bay area, and this will be a 100% remote role*
About Us:
Zeitview is the leading intelligent aerial imaging company for high-value infrastructure, providing businesses with actionable, real-time insights to recover revenue, reduce risk and improve build quality. We serve customers in the solar, wind, insurance, construction, real estate, and critical infrastructure industries. Trusted by the largest enterprises in the world, Zeitview is active in over 70 countries. Our mission is to accelerate the global transition to renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure through advanced inspection solutions. Take a look at our latest achievements here!
About the Role:
We are seeking a Senior Director of Engineering, Platform Engineering to lead and scale our global platform engineering organization. This role is responsible for setting the technical and organizational direction for our platform, ensuring it enables product teams to move fast while maintaining high standards for scalability, performance, reliability, quality, and developer experience.
The ideal candidate is a strong people leader with deep technical judgment, a proven ability to operate at scale, and a strong advocate for an AI-first approach to software development and engineering productivity.
Responsibilities:
People Leadership & Organization Management
- Lead, mentor, and grow global, distributed engineering teams, including tech leads, engineers and potential managers
- Build a high-performance engineering culture centered on ownership, accountability, quality, and continuous improvement.
- Provide regular coaching, feedback, performance evaluations, and career development guidance.
- Drive effective hiring, onboarding, succession planning, and retention strategies.
- Foster an inclusive, collaborative, and psychologically safe environment across regions and time zones.
Platform Strategy & Technical Leadership
- Own the technical strategy and long-term vision for platform engineering, with a focus on:
- Scalability and performance
- Reliability and stability
- Security and compliance
- Developer experience and ease of development
- Platform usability and adoption
- Partner closely with architects and tech leads to define platform standards, architectural patterns, and best practices.
- Ensure the platform serves as a strong foundation enabling rapid and safe product innovation.
- Balance short-term delivery needs with long-term architectural health and sustainability.
Execution, Delivery & Operational Excellence
- Stay sufficiently hands-on to:
- Understand the complexity and risk of initiatives
- Guide work breakdown, prioritization, and sequencing
- Support technical decision-making when needed
- Work closely with engineering managers, tech leads, and architects to drive execution and delivery.
- Own capacity planning, resource allocation, and roadmap commitments across teams.
- Ensure predictable delivery while maintaining high engineering quality and operational Rigor.
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Management
- Act as a key partner to Product, Data, Infrastructure, Security, and other cross-functional leaders.
- Translate business objectives into platform capabilities and technical investments.
- Communicate platform vision, tradeoffs, progress, and risks clearly to executive stakeholders.
- Align platform priorities with broader company strategy and product roadmaps.
OKRs, Metrics & Data-Driven Leadership
- Define, own, and continuously evolve OKRs for the platform engineering organization.
- Establish and track meaningful KPIs across delivery, reliability, quality, developer productivity, and operational health.
- Use data to drive decision-making, prioritize investments, and measure impact.
- Regularly review outcomes and adjust strategy based on insights and results.
AI-First Engineering Culture
- Champion an AI-first mindset across platform engineering.
- Drive adoption of AI-assisted development tools, automation, and intelligent workflows to improve productivity and quality.
- Partner with teams to responsibly integrate AI into platform capabilities and internal engineering processes.
- Foster a culture of experimentation, learning, and innovation around AI in engineering.
- Act as a visible proponent and role model for AI usage within the engineering organization.
Required Qualifications
- 7+ years of experience managing engineering teams, including managers and senior technical leaders.
- 10+ years of hands-on experience in software development.
- Proven experience leading large-scale, distributed or global engineering organizations.
- Strong understanding of modern platform engineering concepts, including developer platforms, shared services, APIs, and infrastructure abstractions.
- Demonstrated ability to balance technical depth with organizational leadership and business impact.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
Nice to Have:
- Prior experience as a Platform Architect or Principal/Staff Engineer.
- Experience building or scaling internal developer platforms.
- Exposure to large-scale, multi-tenant, or high-availability systems.
- Experience driving AI adoption within engineering teams.
What Success Looks Like
- Platform teams consistently deliver reliable, scalable, and easy-to-use capabilities.
- Product teams move faster with fewer dependencies and less friction.
- Engineering decisions are data-driven, and outcomes are measurable.
- AI is embedded naturally into engineering workflows and culture.
- Teams are engaged, growing, and aligned with company goals.
What’s Included:
- Feel great about your work as you join a leading mission-driven intelligent aerial imaging company - our goal is to accelerate the global transition to renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure, and you personally will play a large part in making this happen!
- Competitive salary and annual bonus
- Your choice of multiple medical insurance plans, including options with an HSA and 100% coverage of the premium for yourself and your dependents
- 100% paid dental and vision insurance
- Unlimited PTO: We mean it when we say we prioritize work-life balance and mental health
- Work-from-home environment: flexibility for employees should be the norm for companies
- Autonomy and upward mobility
- Diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture: a place where your voice matters
Zeitview is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. At Zeitview, we believe in cultivating an environment where our team members can bring their authentic, whole selves to work. Encouraging identity and belonging is one of the many aspects of our culture that makes us stronger as an organization and drives innovation. We are committed to building and delivering a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workforce that includes age, color, sex, disability, national origin, race, religion or veteran status, that is representative of the world around us, where all individuals are treated with respect and dignity - and to act swiftly if this value is ever threatened. We are constantly striving to be better, and we continue to take strategic steps to advance representation.
We also provide reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities and for seriously held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law.