Sr. Director of Engineering, Graph Data Plane

Whether you binge-watch a series on Netflix, plan faraway vacations from your phone, or read international news online, you’ve likely used Apollo’s technology this week. Apollo supports some of the largest GraphQL platforms in the world. 
We’re not looking to rest on our laurels though — we’re aiming to change how software is built. Apollo wants to empower every software team to build an amazing user experience across any number of clients, without dealing with a barrage of API endpoints. Are you with us?
ABOUT THE TEAM AND THE ROLE
Today, GraphQL is rapidly emerging as the next generation API technology of choice to unify data access across a wide range of data sources and deliver business value. Apollo’s GraphOS platform helps API platform developers around the world build and operate their data access layers, at scale. It is used in production by some of today's largest and most innovative companies including Netflix, Expedia, Peloton, DoorDash, The New York Times, Zillow, and many more. GraphOS fundamentally democratizes data and accelerates business transformation. Our Graph Data Plane organization owns the critical tier of GraphOS - Core Router and Apollo Federation - the underlying engine powering GraphOS, making it a highly performant, secure, governed, and reliable self-service GraphQL platform. We are looking for an experienced engineering leader who can lead this critical pillar of Apollo’s engineering team to help deliver a delightful GraphOS platform for our users. 
This is an opportunity to deeply partner with the Engineering leadership team to envision the strategy over the next 18-24 months, design and deliver against our roadmap and hone the craft of our Graph Data Plane engineering team through user impact and results.   
WHO YOU ARE
You care deeply about people. You’re fundamentally excited to be a part of building the infrastructure of the future. You have an insatiable curiosity, humility, and drive to hone your craft. You lead with a growth mindset – the work is never done and there’s something to learn from everyone.  You embody our leadership principles in all that you do: creating clarity, unlocking performance, and delivering results. We highly encourage you to apply if you meet the minimum requirements.

What you’ll do

• [Business] Lead key business KPIs to deliver results which align business goals to the organization’s technical strategy, roadmap and objectives.
• [X-org] Collaborate with and influence executive leadership, and cross-functional stakeholders: product management, customer success & go-to-market, to deliver cross-cutting strategic product and infrastructure projects.
• [Run The Business] Drive strategic and tactical prioritization of engineering investments to refine our systems architecture in ways that unlock next generation solutions for our user’s needs.
• [Execution] Manage and grow a team of engineers and engineering leaders, including line managers, to deliver high business impact projects on schedule with high-quality.
• [Hiring] Partner with our Talent Acquisition team to attract and hire top talent, and define the overall hiring strategies for your team.
• [People & development] Build and lead high performing, collaborative teams, empowering leaders through trust, autonomy and psychological safety, and accelerating individual career development.
• [Community] Understand free and open licensed projects deeply, to help drive the right balance between our users’ needs and the community interests.
• Participate in on-call rotation.

Minimum requirements

• 3+ years as a Sr. Director or above (leading directors, managers, senior managers and Principal level IC's).
• Experience leading and scaling teams of at least 25 people.
• Minimum 3 years of deep technical experience managing teams that have shipped and operated critical distributed systems infrastructure at scale.
• Experience managing engineering teams working on API design, platforms (e.g. building internal or external developer products), or frameworks.
• Skilled at both receiving feedback, and delivering feedback that moves the dial.
• Creates alignment, clarity and connection through adaptive and persuasive written and verbal communication skills; able to apply technical judgment to drive clarity with Sr. Staff and Principal engineers about architecture and technical strategic decisions.
• Understanding of different SDLC models and their relevance to source-available products, including optimizing for backwards compatibility, community reception and software licensing.
• Experience driving business and product success in a highly cross-functional environment with a