Director of Engineering - Platform

Atlan; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking company as a Director of Engineering, where you'll lead a globally distributed team to innovate and scale a cutting-edge data collaboration platform. This pivotal role focuses on enhancing system performance, reducing costs, and driving customer-centric outcomes. You'll shape the technical strategy and foster a culture of excellence, ensuring that internal and external customers benefit from a reliable and efficient platform. If you're passionate about transforming data chaos into clarity, this opportunity is for you.

Benefits

Ownership from Day One

Limitless Opportunities

Global Data Community

Qualifications

• Proven experience in architecting high-reliability systems.
• Hands-on familiarity with cloud-native architectures.

Responsibilities

• Lead the engineering efforts to scale core platform capabilities.
• Drive modernization of infrastructure ensuring reliability and cost-efficiency.

Skills

Cloud Infrastructure

Distributed Systems

Metadata Management

Developer Platforms

AI-Powered Observability

Cost Optimization

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Engineering

Master's Degree in Computer Science

Tools

AWS

GCP

Observability Tools

Job description

Data is at the core of modern business, yet many teams struggle with its overwhelming volume and complexity. At Atlan, we’re changing that. As the world’s first active metadata platform, we help organisations transform data chaos into clarity and seamless collaboration.

From Fortune 500 leaders to hyper-growth startups, from automotive innovators redefining mobility to healthcare organisations saving lives, and from Wall Street powerhouses to Silicon Valley trailblazers — we empower ambitious teams across industries to unlock the full potential of their data.

Recognised as leaders by Gartner and Forrester and backed by Insight Partners, Atlan is at the forefront of reimagining how humans and data work together. Joining us means becoming part of a movement to shape a future where data drives extraordinary outcomes.

As a Director of Engineering at Atlan, you will lead the engineering efforts to scale our core Platform capabilities, building the critical foundation for our data collaboration platform.

This role is pivotal in driving innovation, operational excellence, and customer-centric outcomes for a platform that powers the modern data stack.

You will lead a globally distributed engineering organization , shaping its technical direction and fostering a high-performance engineering culture that delivers transformative infrastructure, internal platforms, and developer experience to our global customer & user base.

What Impact Will You Create?

This role is instrumental in scaling Atlan’s foundational systems, ensuring that internal and external customers experience a reliable, performant, and cost-efficient platform.
By enhancing & leveraging our cutting-edge infrastructure, observability, onboarding frameworks, and platform services, you will have a broad-reaching impact, including:

1. Significantly reducing cloud costs while improving system performance and operational margins.

2. Enabling faster and more reliable customer onboarding, ensuring strong first impressions and smoother adoption experiences.

3. Driving next-generation Metadata Lakehouse and search capabilities to power real-time metadata-driven products & use cases.

4. Modernizing and accelerating infrastructure deployment, reducing time-to-market and time to value for critical services.

5. Implementing AI-powered observability and incident management to drive rapid diagnosis, recovery, and system resilience.

6. Enhancing developer productivity by building internal tooling that reduces friction and accelerates innovation.

What Will You Do?

Strategic Vision & Leadership:

1. Define and execute the technical strategy for Atlan’s Platform Business Unit, encompassing infrastructure, onboarding, observability, metadata systems, event driven workflows development and developer productivity.

2. Shape and deliver a multi-year roadmap for scalable, efficient, and reliable platform capabilities that support Atlan’s growth and innovation.

3. Collaborate closely with senior stakeholders to align platform investments with business outcomes, customer needs, and product evolution.
   

Team Leadership & Talent Development:

1. Lead and scale a diverse, globally distributed engineering team , including Engineering Managers, leads, and senior engineers.

2. Build, grow and enable a strong engineering leadership pipeline, nurturing technical excellence, autonomy, and a growth mindset.

3. Champion diversity, inclusion, and a culture of high ownership and collaboration.
   

Operational Excellence:

1. Drive modernization of core infrastructure and platforms, ensuring reliability, scalability, and cost-efficiency.

2. Establish and enforce engineering best practices for system architecture, operational excellence, cost governance, and security.

3. Implement metrics-driven processes to track platform health, performance, and team productivity.
   

Customer-Centric Innovation:

1. Leverage metadata automation, AI-ready systems, and internal developer platforms to streamline complex workflows and enhance end-user outcomes.

2. Continuously improve the developer and customer experience by identifying bottlenecks, driving intelligent automation, and building scalable services.

3. Act as a trusted partner across internal teams, helping Atlan innovate faster while maintaining reliability at scale.
   

What Makes You a Great Match?

Engineering Expertise

1. Deep technical leadership background in platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, metadata management, or developer platforms.

2. Proven experience architecting and scaling high-reliability, high-scale systems for SaaS, PaaS, or cloud-native environments.

3. Hands-on familiarity with cloud-native architectures (AWS/GCP), multi-tenant systems, observability, and cost optimization best practices.
   

Leadership Excellence

1. Demonstrated success leading large, distributed engineering teams and scaling organizations through hypergrowth phases.

2. Strong track record of defining and delivering multi-year platform strategies aligned with business needs.

3. Exceptional ability to collaborate across cross-functional teams, including product, security, design, and customer success.
   

Customer Empathy & Problem Solving

1. Deep understanding of internal developer challenges and external customer needs in the data/infra ecosystem.

2. Ability to translate complex problems into pragmatic, scalable solutions that create long-term customer and business impact.

3. High sense of ownership, driven by a passion to solve real-world problems through world-class engineering.
   

As a Platform Engineering leader at Atlan, you will not only define the future of our platform services, infrastructure and developer experience, but also help build a foundation that enables the most sophisticated data teams across the world.
Join us to drive innovation and create impact in a rapidly evolving data and AI landscape.

Apply now to be part of the future of the Modern Data Stack!

Why Atlan for You?

At Atlan, we believe the future belongs to the humans of data. From curing diseases to advancing space exploration, data teams are powering humanity's greatest achievements. Yet, working with data can be chaotic—our mission is to transform that experience. We're reimagining how data teams collaborate by building the home they deserve, enabling them to create winning data cultures and drive meaningful progress.

Joining Atlan means:

1. Ownership from Day One: Whether you're an intern or a full-time teammate, you’ll own impactful projects, chart your growth, and collaborate with some of the best minds in the industry.

2. Limitless Opportunities: At Atlan, your growth has no boundaries. If you’re ready to take initiative, the sky’s the limit.

3. A Global Data Community: We’re deeply embedded in the modern data stack, contributing to open-source projects, sponsoring meet-ups, and empowering team members to grow through conferences and learning opportunities.

As a fast-growing, fully remote company trusted by global leaders like Cisco, Nasdaq, and HubSpot, we’re creating a category-defining platform for data and AI governance. Backed by top investors, we’ve achieved 7X revenue growth in two years and are building a talented team spanning 15+ countries.

If you’re ready to do your life’s best work and help shape the future of data collaboration, join Atlan and become part of a mission to empower the humans of data to achieve more, together.

We are an equal opportunity employer
At Atlan, we’re committed to helping data teams do their lives’ best work. We believe that diversity and authenticity are the cornerstones of innovation, and by embracing varied perspectives and experiences, we can create a workplace where everyone thrives. Atlan is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.