Director of Engineering [REMOTE]

<div class="content-intro"><p style="line-height: 1; text-align: justify;">Upbound is redefining how modern infrastructure is built for the Agentic AI Era. We’re the creators and primary maintainers of <strong>Crossplane</strong>, and we’re building the <strong>Intelligent Control Plane</strong>—a new platform layer that makes infrastructure <strong>programmable, autonomous, and composable</strong>.</p> <p style="line-height: 1; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Our mission</strong></span> is to power the AI-native enterprise with a foundational platform layer that helps teams provision, operate, and adapt infrastructure at scale—so platforms are ready for <strong>both humans and AI agents</strong>. We partner with leading cloud providers, ISVs, and open-source communities to help organizations move faster with greater confidence.</p> <p style="line-height: 1; text-align: justify;">Today, Upbound supports <strong>Fortune 500 companies</strong> and platform engineers across <strong>100+ countries</strong>. Crossplane has surpassed <strong>100M+ downloads</strong> and is used by <strong>1,000+ teams worldwide</strong>. We’re a <strong>Series B</strong> company backed by <strong>GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital</strong>, and we’ve raised <strong>$69M</strong> to date. Learn more at <strong><a href="http://upbound.io/" target="_blank" data-sk="tooltip_parent">upbound.io</a></strong></p></div><p>Upbound is building the control plane for the modern enterprise. As the company behind Crossplane, the open-source CNCF project that extends Kubernetes into an AI-native cloud control plane. Upbound enables organizations to compose, manage, and operate infrastructure and services through declarative, programmable control planes. Upbound Cloud delivers hosted, multi-tenant control planes that power platform engineering teams at scale. Our vision extends beyond infrastructure management into an AI-native Control Fabric — where control planes become programmable, extensible, and ecosystem-driven. As we scale into the next phase of growth, <strong>we are hiring a <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Director to lead our Control Planes & Ecosystem Group</span>. </strong></p> <p><strong>As Director of Control Planes & Ecosystem</strong>, you will own the strategy and execution for the customer-facing control plane experience across:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Crossplane:</strong> Upstream work and contributions for the open source Crossplane Project</li> <li><strong>Upbound Crossplane:</strong> Upbound’s Enterprise Distribution of Crossplane</li> <li><strong>Upbound Marketplace: </strong>The place where Users and Customers discover content</li> <li><strong>Upbound Official Providers and Extensions:</strong> Development and maintenance of Providers, Add-Ons, Functions, and more</li> <li><strong>Partner Integrations: </strong>Development of Extensions with third party partners </li> </ul> <p>This is a senior leadership role responsible for scaling teams, defining long-term architecture strategy, and shaping how enterprises adopt programmable control planes through a thriving ecosystem.<br>You will lead multiple managers and high-performing engineering teams, driving cohesion across product and user experiences.</p> <p><strong>In this role, you will…</strong></p> <p><strong>Control Plane & Enterprise Strategy</strong></p> <ul> <li>Help define and drive the long-term vision for hosted control planes and ecosystem extensibility.</li> <li>Ensure Marketplace, UXP, APIs, and Extensions operate as a cohesive control plane experience.</li> <li>Shape how platform engineering teams compose infrastructure through Crossplane-powered abstractions.</li> <li>Drive reliability, scalability, and production-grade control planes at scale.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Ecosystem Leadership</strong></p> <ul> <li>Own the strategy for Upbound Marketplace as the distribution layer for Crossplane providers, extensions, and control plane building blocks.</li> <li>Grow and strengthen the provider ecosystem (ISVs, cloud providers, platform partners).</li> <li>Enable extension frameworks that allow customers and partners to build on top of Upbound control planes.</li> <li>Ensure ecosystem experiences are intuitive, secure, and enterprise-ready.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Organizational Leadership</strong></p> <ul> <li>Lead managers and managers-of-managers across multiple teams.</li> <li>Scale engineering org structure to support product velocity and ecosystem expansion.</li> <li>Establish operational rigor: roadmap planning, delivery predictability, uptime SLAs, and production excellence.</li> <li>Foster a culture of ownership, innovation, and deep technical craftsmanship.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Cross-Functional Influence</strong></p> <ul> <li>Partner closely with Product, GTM, Alliances, and Customer Success to align ecosystem strategy with revenue goals.</li> <li>Translate enterprise customer needs into scalable control plane capabilities.</li> <li>Represent engineering in executive-level conversations around ecosystem expansion and AI-native infrastructure.</li> </ul> <p><strong>You are a good fit if you have…</strong></p> <ul> <li>10+ years of engineering leadership experience, including leading managers of managers.</li> <li>5+ years building or scaling cloud-native, infrastructure, or platform engineering products.</li> <li>Deep familiarity with Kubernetes and the Cloud Native ecosystem.</li> <li>Experience building SaaS control planes or distributed systems at scale.</li> <li>Strong understanding of APIs, SDKs, declarative systems, and extensibility frameworks.</li> <li>Proven experience growing ecosystem-driven products (marketplaces, providers, plugins, or integrations).</li> <li>Track record of delivering reliable production services with strong uptime and performance standards.</li> <li>Ability to operate strategically while diving deep technically.</li> </ul> <p><strong>It is a plus if…</strong></p> <ul> <li>Experience with Crossplane and/or Kubernetes.</li> <li>Background in platform engineering or internal developer platforms.</li> <li>Experience building multi-tenant control plane architectures.</li> <li>Startup experience in high-growth infrastructure companies.</li> <li>Passion for programmable infrastructure and AI-native systems.</li> </ul> <p><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">#LI-REMOTE</span></p><div class="content-conclusion"><h3 style="line-height: 1;"><strong>Why Upbound?</strong></h3> <p style="line-height: 1;">At Upbound, you’ll help sh