Senior Director, Platform & Security Engineering

Ellevation Education; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Ellevation Education in Boston is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to oversee security-focused platform work across eight squads. You’ll mentor staff engineers, shape cross-cutting bets, and own the security posture in collaboration with Curriculum Associates.

This role reports to the VP of Engineering and will grow the team and influence priorities. You’ll balance technical tradeoffs, drive operational excellence, and coordinate with CA on security standards, SLAs, and KPIs.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering, including experience leading engineering teams.
• Experience hiring and leading senior and staff-level engineers, and growing them as technical leaders.
• A track record of taking large, ambiguous technical problems that span teams, such as platform modernization, legacy migrations, or authentication, from a well-defined problem through delivery, working through teams that did not report to you.
• A strong technical foundation in modern web applications, cloud infrastructure, and CI/CD, enough to judge tradeoffs and earn credibility with Staff Engineers.
• A background in security across application security, cloud security, compliance, and incident response, including hands-on experience with SAST, SCA, and dependency scanning tooling.
• Experience moving decisions forward in a matrixed organization, ideally between a central function and a business unit at a parent company, acquirer, or major partner.
• A track record of communicating technical and security risk to executive audiences.
• Experience building software that handles sensitive or regulated data, such as in education, healthcare, or financial services, is a strong plus

Responsibilities

• Drive cross-cutting bets by identifying problems spanning squads and defining boundaries, risks, and priority.
• Lead the Staff Engineers by growing the group, setting direction, and coaching technical leaders.
• Lead security practice across Ellevation, turning CA standards into working practice with clear ownership and escalation.
• Own the CA security relationship, aligning reporting, standards, SLAs, and KPIs with CA and stakeholders.

Job description

Ellevation Education in Boston is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to oversee security-focused platform work across eight squads. You’ll mentor staff engineers, shape cross-cutting bets, and own the security posture in collaboration with Curriculum Associates.

This role reports to the VP of Engineering and will grow the team and influence priorities. You’ll balance technical tradeoffs, drive operational excellence, and coordinate with CA on security standards, SLAs, and KPIs.