Director of Engineering, Infrastructure

Hidden Road; United States; On-site; USD 272,000 - 340,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Professional development budget

In‑office collaboration days

Job summary

Ripple seeks a hands‑on engineering leader to guide the teams responsible for cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platform, and developer experience. You will shape the multi‑cloud strategy and oversee architecture reviews, incident response, and cost management.

With 12+ years in software and infrastructure and 5+ years leading teams, you’ll drive a roadmap that balances reliability, security, and developer velocity across AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of hands‑on software and infrastructure engineering experience
• 5+ years leading teams and managing managers
• Production‑grade Kubernetes at scale across multi‑cluster and multi‑tenant environments
• Experience with 3 major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Infrastructure‑as‑code and declarative operations (Terraform, Helm, GitOps)
• Observability for distributed systems (metrics, logging, tracing, alerts)
• Service networking and security across cloud boundaries
• Improve developer experience with fast deploys and self‑service platforms
• Collaboration with security and regulatory oversight in regulated environments
• Agile development with emphasis on scalable, secure design
• Strong leadership, communication, and willingness to mentor others
• BS or equivalent in Computer Science or similar

Responsibilities

• Lead technical and organizational strategy for multi‑cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes platform
• Oversee multiple teams including compute, cloud infra, developer experience and reliability engineering
• Define and deliver multi‑year infrastructure roadmap (cluster architecture, orchestration, service networking)
• Set standards for operational excellence (SLOs, incident response, on‑call health)
• Drive cross‑cloud strategy: workload placement, portability, disaster recovery, regional resilience
• Collaborate with Security and Compliance to meet SOC 2, ISO 27001, regulatory requirements
• Own cloud spend and drive efficiency and unit economics
• Provide hands‑on technical leadership: architecture reviews, design docs, escalations
• Mentor and grow managers and ICs, align team objectives with company goals
• Scale organization by hiring and developing leaders and engineers
• Translate infra investments into business terms for engineers and executives

Skills

Leadership experience

Cloud infrastructure

Kubernetes at scale

Multi-cloud

Security collaboration

Education

BS or equivalent in Computer Science

Tools

Terraform

Helm

GitOps (Argo CD/Flux)

Kubernetes

Argo CD

Flux

Job description

At Ripple, we're building a world where value moves like information does today. It's big, it's bold, and we're already doing it. Through our crypto solutions for financial institutions, businesses, governments and developers, we are improving the global financial system and creating greater economic fairness and opportunity for more people, in more places around the world. And we get to do the best work of our career and grow our skills surrounded by colleagues who have our backs.

If you're ready to see your impact and unlock incredible career growth opportunities, join us, and build real world value.

At Ripple, we're building a world where value moves like information does today. It's big, it's bold, and we're already doing it. Through our crypto solutions for financial institutions, businesses, governments and developers, we are improving the global financial system and creating greater economic fairness and opportunity for more people, in more places around the world. And we get to do the best work of our career and grow our skills surrounded by colleagues who have our backs.

If you're ready to see your impact and embrace meaningful challenges, join us, and build real world value.

Every payment, every custody operation, and every line of code at Ripple runs on the infrastructure our platform teams build. We operate a multi-cloud, Kubernetes-native environment spanning multiple regions and regulatory jurisdictions, engineered for the availability and security standards our financial institution customers expect - and for the developer velocity our engineers need. The systems this organization owns are the substrate for everything Ripple ships.

We have a big vision and the ambition to match. We are seeking the same in engineering leaders. You see infrastructure not as plumbing but as leverage: the difference between an engineering organization that ships weekly and one that ships continuously, between a platform that survives a regional outage and one that doesn't notice it happened.

We're looking for a hands‑on engineering leader to develop and guide the teams responsible for Ripple's cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platform, and developer experience.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Lead the technical and organizational strategy managing multi-cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes platform at Ripple, balancing reliability, security, cost, and developer velocity y
• Lead multiple teams and managers across compute platform, cloud infrastructure, developer experience, and reliability engineering
• Define and deliver the multi-year infrastructure roadmap, including cluster architecture, workload orchestration, service networking, infrastructure-as-code, and CI/CD
• Set the standard for operational excellence - SLOs, incident response, on-call health, blameless postmortems, and dynamic rollout practices - and hold the organization to it
• Drive multi-cloud strategy and execution: workload placement, portability, avoiding accidental lock-in, disaster recovery, and multi-region resilience
• Partner with Security and Compliance to build infrastructure that satisfies SOC 2, ISO 27001, and jurisdiction-specific regulatory requirements without slowing engineering down
• Own cloud spend for your organization, with clear accountability for efficiency and unit economics as the platform scales
• Provide hands‑on technical leadership - architecture reviews, design docs, incident escalations, and the occasional pull request
• Mentor and grow the professional and technical development of your team, both managers and individual contributors
• Establish team objectives and quarterly plans in alignment with business and organizational goals
• Translate infrastructure investments into terms that resonate with engineers, product leaders, and executives alike
• Scale the organization by attracting, hiring, and developing exceptional leaders and engineers at all levels

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• 12+ years of hands‑on software and infrastructure engineering experience, including 5+ years leading teams and managing managers
• Deep, production‑grade experience with Kubernetes at scale - multi‑cluster and multi‑tenant operations, upgrade strategy, workload isolation, autoscaling, and the failure modes you only learn about the hard way
• Experience operating across more than one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, Azure) and a clear point of view on where multi‑cloud pays for itself and where it doesn't
• Strong background in infrastructure‑as‑code and declarative operations (Terraform, Helm, GitOps tooling such as Argo CD or Flux)
• Track record building highly available, secure distributed systems and the observability to run them (metrics, logging, tracing, alerting that people actually trust)
• Experience with service networking and service mesh technologies, and with securing traffic and identity across cloud boundaries
• Demonstrated ability to improve developer experience measurably - build and deploy times, environment provisioning, self‑service platform capabilities
• Experience partnering with security and regulatory oversight functions in a regulated environment; comfort with least‑privilege, key management, and audit requirements
• Experience with Agile development, with a focus on robust design, scalability, and security
• Solid leadership and communication skills, with the judgment to know when to decide, when to delegate, and when to dig in yourself
• Eagerness to work openly and collaboratively with a diverse team, with a positive attitude and a passion for sharing knowledge
• BS or equivalent experience in Computer Science or similar

Nice to have: experience in FinTech, payments, or crypto infrastructure; familiarity with blockchain node operations; exposure to hardware security modules or high‑assurance key management systems.

For positions that will be based in CA, the annual salary range for this position is below. Actual salaries may vary based on numerous factors including, among other things, an individual applicant's experience and qualifications for the position. This range does not include equity or additional compensation, such as bonuses or commissions.

CA Annual Base Salary Range

$272,000 - $340,000 USD

WHO WE ARE:

Do Your Best Work

• The opportunity to build in a fast-paced start-up environment with experienced industry leaders
• A learning environment where you can dive deep into the latest technologies and make an impact. A professional development budget to support other modes of learning.
• Thrive in an environment where no matter what race, ethnicity, gender, origin, or culture they identify with, every employee is a respected, valued, and empowered part of the team.
• In-office collaboration for moments that matter is important to our culture, and we give managers and teams the flexibility to decide which 10+ days a month they come in.
• Bi-weekly all-company meeting - business updates and ask me anything style discussion with our Leadership Team
• We come together for moments that matter which include team offsites, team bonding activities, happy hours and more!

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