Director of Engineering [REMOTE]

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, we are hiring a Director to lead our Control Planes & Ecosystem Group. 

• Help define and drive the long-term vision for hosted control planes and ecosystem extensibility.
• Ensure Marketplace, UXP, APIs, and Extensions operate as a cohesive control plane experience.
• Shape how platform engineering teams compose infrastructure through Crossplane-powered abstractions.
• Drive reliability, scalability, and production-grade control planes at scale.

• Own the strategy for Upbound Marketplace as the distribution layer for Crossplane providers, extensions, and control plane building blocks.
• Grow and strengthen the provider ecosystem (ISVs, cloud providers, platform partners).
• Enable extension frameworks that allow customers and partners to build on top of Upbound control planes.
• Ensure ecosystem experiences are intuitive, secure, and enterprise-ready.

• Lead managers and managers-of-managers across multiple teams.
• Scale engineering org structure to support product velocity and ecosystem expansion.
• Establish operational rigor: roadmap planning, delivery predictability, uptime SLAs, and production excellence.
• Foster a culture of ownership, innovation, and deep technical craftsmanship.

• Partner closely with Product, GTM, Alliances, and Customer Success to align ecosystem strategy with revenue goals.
• Translate enterprise customer needs into scalable control plane capabilities.
• Represent engineering in executive-level conversations around ecosystem expansion and AI-native infrastructure.

• 10+ years of engineering leadership experience, including leading managers of managers.
• 5+ years building or scaling cloud-native, infrastructure, or platform engineering products.
• Deep familiarity with Kubernetes and the Cloud Native ecosystem.
• Experience building SaaS control planes or distributed systems at scale.
• Strong understanding of APIs, SDKs, declarative systems, and extensibility frameworks.
• Proven experience growing ecosystem-driven products (marketplaces, providers, plugins, or integrations).
• Track record of delivering reliable production services with strong uptime and performance standards.
• Ability to operate strategically while diving deep technically.

• Experience with Crossplane and/or Kubernetes.
• Background in platform engineering or internal developer platforms.
• Experience building multi-tenant control plane architectures.
• Startup experience in high-growth infrastructure companies.
• Passion for programmable infrastructure and AI-native systems.

#LI-REMOTE

At Upbound, you’ll help shape the systems and strategies that drive predictable, scalable growth in a product-led company embracing usage-based models. If you're excited to build from the ground up, work with cutting-edge cloud technologies, and directly impact how revenue is generated and scaled—this is your seat at the table.

Upbound is pioneering infrastructure platforms for the Agentic AI Era, serving Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across more than 100 countries. The company empowers infrastructure and platform teams with Intelligent Control Planes - based on Kubernetes and Crossplane - that provision, operate, and adapt so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents. Upbound is the creator and primary maintainer of Crossplane, the popular open-source framework for building cloud-native control planes, with over 100 million downloads and adoption by more than 1,000 teams worldwide. A Series B startup backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, Upbound has raised $69M to date. For more information, visit www.upbound.io.