Director, Platform Engineering

Babylist; Emeryville (CA); Remote; USD 195,000 - 294,000; Full time

Job summary

Babylist is seeking a Director of Platform Engineering to lead foundational technology efforts. This strategic role involves shaping the platform roadmap to support growth and ensure security, while fostering a world-class developer experience. The ideal candidate will possess extensive experience in platform engineering and a passion for innovation.

Benefits

Company paid medical, dental, and vision

Generous paid parental leave policy

401k with company match

Flexible spending account

Tools and stipend for office setup

Qualifications

• Experience in platform engineering and security in high-growth tech.
• Strong background in cloud infrastructure and CI/CD.
• Demonstrated leadership in building high-performing engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and communicate platform strategy and roadmap.
• Lead platform and security engineering teams.
• Implement monitoring and observability for platform health.

Skills

Platform Strategy

Developer Experience

Security Engineering

Data-Driven Decision Making

Team Leadership

Education

8-10+ years in platform engineering

4+ years in a leadership role

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

CI/CD

Job description

Who We Are

Babylist is the trusted platform for millions of growing families. For over a decade, Babylist has been the technology solution for expecting parents and the community that supports them, expanding from baby registry into a full-service platform that helps parents make decisions with confidence, stay connected, and build happy and healthy families. Every year Babylist helps over 9M people make purchases through its registry, app, ecommerce shop, and comprehensive product guides. The Babylist ecosystem now includes Babylist Health, which provides access to products and services including insurance-covered breast pumps, Expectful, a new voice in health and wellness for pre-pregnancy through postpartum care, and The Push, a branded content studio that works with the biggest companies in the baby space. With over 59M monthly pageviews and 1.2M TikTok followers, Babylist is a generational brand leading the $88 billion baby product industry. To learn about Babylist's registry options, editorial content, and more, visit www.babylist.com

Our Ways of Working

Babylist thrives as a remote-first company, with HQ team members located across the U.S. and Canada. We meet in person twice a year—once as a company and once by department to strengthen the relationships that power our work. We show up consistently, stay purpose-driven, and achieve results —together, from anywhere.

Our Tech Stack

• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform
• Languages & Frameworks: Ruby on Rails, React
• Databases & Data: MySQL, Redis, Snowflake
• CI/CD & Observability: GitHub Actions, Datadog
  
  

What the Role Is

As the Director of Platform Engineering at Babylist, you will be a key leader responsible for the foundational technology that powers our growth. This is a highly strategic role that involves defining the future of our platform to support our expanding business, from our core registry to new health services. You will lead the teams responsible for platform engineering, developer experience (DevEx), and security, ensuring our systems are scalable, secure, and empower our engineers to innovate quickly. This role reports to the SVP of Engineering.

Who You Are

• Define and Communicate Platform Strategy: Develop a clear, forward-looking platform roadmap that anticipates future business needs and scales for tens of millions of users. You will partner with product, engineering, and executive stakeholders to understand their needs, communicate the vision, and ensure the platform roadmap enables their success
• Build a World-Class Developer Experience: Champion developer productivity by delivering tooling, automated workflows, and internal platforms that enable engineering teams to ship code faster and more reliably
• Lead Platform and Security Engineering: Evolve our cloud architecture to handle increasing traffic and complexity while optimizing for cost and efficiency. You will lead the implementation of a unified security strategy, embedding DevSecOps practices and automated security tooling into the development lifecycle to protect user data and ensure compliance
• Drive Data-Driven Decisions: Implement comprehensive monitoring and observability to provide clear insights into platform health, developer productivity, and security posture. Use this data to justify technical decisions and guide your roadmap
• Build and Mentor High-Performing Teams: Recruit, develop, and lead a talented team of platform and security engineers. Foster a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous learning that empowers engineers to do their best work
  
  

How You Will Make An Impact

• Experienced Leader: You have 8-10+ years of experience in platform engineering and security, with at least 4 years in a leadership role at a high-growth technology company
• Strategic Thinker: A technical leader who is skilled at creating a long-term vision and making pragmatic build-vs-buy decisions. You have a proven track record of leading large-scale initiatives
• Technical Expertise: Deep, hands-on experience with modern cloud infrastructure, containerization, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code. You have deep knowledge of security best practices and compliance for customer-facing applications
• Collaborative Communicator: You excel at partnering with cross-functional teams and can translate complex technical concepts for diverse audiences to influence decisions across the organization
• A Passion for the Platform: You are passionate about creating a fantastic developer experience and ensuring platform reliability. You lead with a strong sense of ownership and use data to drive results
  
  

Why You Will Love Working At Babylist

• We invest in the infrastructure you'll need to be supported and successful: tools, opportunities to connect with colleagues, and a stipend to help you set up your office
• We build products that have a positive impact on millions of people's lives
• We work at a sustainable pace which means work/life balance is a real thing here
• We believe technology and data can solve hard problems
• We believe in exceptional management
• We offer competitive pay and meaningful opportunities for career advancement
• We have great benefits like company paid medical, dental, and vision, a generous paid parental leave policy, and 401k with company match
• We care about employee wellbeing with perks for physical, mental and emotional health, parenting, childcare, and financial planning
  
  

Babylist takes a market-based approach to pay, and pay may vary depending on your location. Your actual base salary will depend on factors such as your skills, qualifications, experience, and work location.

The estimated pay range for this role is $195,880.00 - $293,820.00

In addition, Babylist offers equity, bonus, and benefits, including company paid health, dental and vision insurance, 401(k) matching, flexible spending account, and paid leave (including PTO and parental leave) in accordance with our applicable plans and policies.

SMS Consent: As part of our hiring process, Babylist may offer the option to receive text message updates about your application and interview scheduling. You will have the opportunity to opt in or out of SMS communications later in the application process. Choosing not to receive SMS messages will not affect your application status, and communication will continue via email or phone. Message and Data Rates may apply. You can STOP messaging by sending STOP and get more help by sending HELP. To view our Privacy Policy, please visit https://www.babylist.com/privacy.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Our company takes the security and privacy of job applicants very seriously. We will never ask for payment, bank details, or personal financial information as part of the application process. All of our legitimate job postings can be found on our official career site. Please be cautious of job offers that come from non-company email addresses (@babylist.com), instant messaging platforms or unsolicited calls.