Director of Platform Engineering

SailGP; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

SailGP is seeking a Director of Platform Engineering in London to lead the long-term technical vision for SailGP’s digital and data ecosystem, including SailGP.com, App/Headsets, SailGP Insights and related products. You will bridge business strategy with technical execution, building a high-performing engineering organisation able to scale across global events.

You will define architecture, standards, and oversee vendor relationships while driving AI automation, SEO, and live-event performance.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering with leadership experience.
• 3+ years in Director or Senior Engineering Management.
• Expertise in front-end technologies and architecture.
• Experience architecting cloud-native infrastructure and time-series data.
• Proven ability to scale distributed systems and AI infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Recruit, mentor, and lead a high-performing, multi-disciplinary engineering team.
• Define long-term technical roadmap and architecture strategy aligned with business goals.
• Oversee budget, vendor management, and external SaaS partnerships.
• Ensure production software reliability, security, and SEO best practices.
• Drive AI automation and rapid prototyping for platform features.

Skills

Senior leadership

Frontend technologies

Cloud-native infrastructure

Data processing

AI infrastructure

Scale and performance

Content platforms

Executive communication

Tools

Contentful

Job description

About SailGP

The Rolex SailGP Championship is the most exciting racing on water, where anything can happen in short, adrenaline-fueled battles between national teams at iconic stadium destinations worldwide. Top athletes fly in identical high-tech F50 catamarans faster than the wind, at speeds in excess of 100km/h (60mph). Founded in 2018, SailGP is one of the world’s fastest-growing sports and entertainment properties, now in its sixth season.

SailGP also races for a better future, championing a world powered by nature. Underpinning the organisation’s purpose-driven agenda is a diversification of the league, with the goal of immediately progressing gender equity and inclusivity.

SailGP is a global organisation with defined values that shape the culture of its team – Deliver Quality and Consistency; Evolve with Focus; Make it Count; Stand Together and Strike a Balance.

Summary

The Director of Platform Engineering is a senior technical leader responsible for the long-term technological vision, development, and evolution of SailGP’s digital and data ecosystem. This role oversees the production software powering our digital estate (e.g. SailGP.com, SailGP App/ Headsets, SailGPInsights, SailGP Media Portal, Fan Simulator), and betting applications, they are responsible for the entire technology stack supporting these products.

As a Director, you will bridge the gap between business strategy and technical execution, partnering with executive leadership across the Digital and Technology teams. You will build and scale a high-performing engineering organisation, oversee architecture and engineering standards, manage vendor relationships, and drive day-to-day AI automation. This position requires a strong blend of strategic foresight, people leadership, and a deep understanding of advanced engineering practices to deliver a world-class digital experience for a global audience.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & People Management:

• Team Building: Recruit, mentor, and lead a high-performing, multi-disciplinary team of software engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and engineering excellence.
• Technical Vision: Define and execute the long-term technical roadmap and architecture strategy, ensuring alignment with SailGP’s broader commercial and digital business objectives.
• Stakeholder Alignment: Act as a strategic partner to the Group Technology Director to prioritise initiatives and translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Budget & Vendor Management: Oversee the software engineering budget, evaluate third-party technologies, and manage relationships with external development agencies and SaaS vendors.
• Collaboration: Work closely with Director of Performance Engineering and Director of Liveline to end-to-end data pipeline is fit for purpose.

Engineering Excellence & Technical Execution:

• System Architecture: Guide architectural decisions and establish technical standards across the organisation, ensuring scalability, security, and high availability for platforms like SailGP.com, the SailGP App/ Headsets, Fan Simulator and SailGP Insights.
• Production Ownership: Oversee the maintenance and evolution of production software, implementing best-practice with an AI first software engineering approach (agile methodologies, unit testing, refactoring, rigorous code reviews, and CI/CD pipelines).
• Performance & SEO: Direct technical strategies for concurrency, profiling, and performance optimisation in high-traffic, live-event environments. Ensure all platforms adhere to foundational and technical SEO principles.
• AI & Automation: Lead the evaluation and implementation of day-to-day AI automation tools to improve development workflows, content delivery, and user experiences.

Innovation & Rapid Prototyping:

• UX & Front-End Strategy: Champion strong UX design principles and integrate complex front-end code dependencies, ensuring technical solutions provide intuitive, engaging user journeys.
• Platform Expertise: Leverage deep experience in enterprise headless CMS platforms (such as Contentful) to create flexible, omnichannel content delivery architectures.
• Agile Adaptation: Maintain the team's ability to rapidly prototype new features, POCs (Proofs of Concept), and adjust technical direction quickly in response to internal feedback and shifting market trends.

About You

Experience & Technical Skills:

• Senior Leadership: 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3+ years in a Director or Senior Engineering Management role overseeing multi-disciplinary teams.
• Advanced Coding Foundation: Deep foundational expertise in common front-end technologies and architecture. Ability to dive into the code for high-level troubleshooting and code reviews.
• Infrastructure: Expertise in architecting cloud-native infrastructure, leveraging SQL and time-series databases to ensure system reliability and performance at scale.
• Data Processing: Proven track record of leading teams to build and scale distributed architectures that handle massive datasets, focusing on low-latency processing and efficient data governance
• AI: Proven track record of scaling enterprise-grade AI infrastructure and software development practices to ensure we have a modern and efficient ways of working
• Scale & Performance: Proven track record of designing, scaling, and maintaining high-traffic consumer-facing applications and production environments.
• Content Platforms: Deep experience designing architecture around headless or decoupled content platforms, such as Contentful.

Leadership & Problem Solving:

• Commercial Acumen: Strong ability to connect engineering output to business ROI, balancing technical debt with the need for speed-to-market.
• UX & Design: Strong understanding and experience of UX design.
• Communication: Exceptional executive-level communication skills; capable of confidently translating complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and C-suite executives.

Personal Attributes:

• A visionary leader who is self-motivated and capable of working autonomously, while actively empowering and trusting their team.
• Thrives in a fast-paced, high-pressure, live-event sports environment and can adapt quickly to changing circumstances.
• Calm, decisive, and highly effective under pressure.

Location

SailGP HQ in London, United Kingdom. Hybrid working model with a minimum of three days per week in the London office.

• Occasional travel to global events may be required.

SailGP is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace committed to building a team culture that celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion.