Director of Engineering, Security

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Company Introduction  

We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we’re collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce.  

We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurs surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day. 

Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world. 

Role Overview 

We are looking for a hands-on Director of Engineering with deep technical expertise and a passion for building secure, reliable, and scalable systems. This role combines technical architecture leadership with people and delivery management. You will lead a team of talented senior engineers while staying close to the code and system design.

Your mission: drive the security, quality, and reliability of our core platforms while mentoring engineers, scaling engineering excellence, and partnering closely with product and leadership on roadmaps.

What You Will Do

• Build and grow a high-performing team of senior/staff-level engineers working in different geographic areas, fostering autonomy, trust, and accountability
• Design and lead the architecture of secure, scalable backend systems using Java (Spring Boot) and AWS cloud-native services
• Drive code quality standards, best practices, technical reviews, and system reliability across teams, own system reliability, performance, and security posture
• Lead by example — write and review code when needed, unblock engineers, and make critical architectural decisions, Create a culture of technical excellence, and continuous learning
• Partner with product and leadership to define and deliver on engineering roadmaps and strategic initiatives
• Integrate Generative AI capabilities (e.g., embeddings, RAG, LLM APIs) into product workflows responsibly and securely
• Lead design and implementation of authentication, authorization, and identity management solutions (SSO, OIDC, RBAC/ABAC, SCIM, etc.)
• 15+ years of backend/software engineering experience, with at least 3–5 years in engineering leadership, experience in AI/ML development highly desired 
• Expertise in Java, Spring Boot, and AWS architecture and services (e.g., EKS, S3, Lambda, RDS, IAM, KMS)
• Track record of leading and scaling senior technical teams, especially in fast-paced environments
• Comfortable managing delivery and roadmap planning while staying close to technical details
• Prior experience in SaaS, platform teams, or cloud-native product environments is a must

What You’ll Get

• A leadership role with real technical impact — you’re not just managing, you’re helping shape the product
• Opportunity to scale a high-performance engineering culture from the ground up
• A team-first, no-ego engineering culture where excellence is expected and supported

Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (Master’s/PhD preferred) 
• 15+ years of experience in software development/security engineering, or 8+ years if holding an advanced degree 
• At least 6+ years of people management experienc