Senior Director, Software Engineering - Slack Application Architecture and Systems

Leadout Capital; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 400,000; Full time

Job summary

Slack is seeking an engineering leader to own the shared technical foundations across web, desktop, and mobile. As Senior Director of Engineering for the Application Architecture and Systems pillar, you will lead a 50+ person organization, hire and mentor managers, set a multi-year technical strategy, and partner with Product and Design to drive an ambitious roadmap.

The role emphasizes engineering excellence, reliability, and high-velocity delivery in an agentic development era, including

Qualifications

• Significant experience leading product infrastructure engineering at a company with a complex, large-scale client application.
• Experience in client infrastructure; web and mobile depth is valued.
• Track record leading large engineering organizations, including managing managers and coaching senior leaders.
• Ability to set technical strategy and translate it into a roadmap with Product/Design.
• Hold teams to high standards for performance, reliability and quality.
• Collaborate across functions without direct authority over all parties.
• Related technical degree.

Responsibilities

• Lead the engineering organization—own the Application Architecture and Systems engineering organization across web, desktop, and mobile.
• Define and drive the multi-year technical vision and roadmap for Slack's client infrastructure.
• Raise the bar on performance, reliability, quality, and craft in the team's work and culture.
• Reshape how client engineering teams build and ship so they move faster without sacrificing quality (including AI agents).
• Own shared platforms—frameworks, components, design-system foundations, internal client APIs.
• Champion accessibility and ensure it is a first-class concern.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, and executive peers to align priorities and dependencies.
• Build a connected, global team and drive a high-performing culture.

Skills

Product infrastructure

Leadership at scale

Cross-functional collab

AI-assisted development

Platform architecture

Accessibility

Tools

Electron

Job description

The Experience

We're looking for an engineering leader to own the shared technical foundations of Slack's clients. As Senior Director of Engineering for the Application Architecture and Systems pillar, you will lead the organization responsible for Slack's product infrastructure. That includes shared client infrastructure, frameworks, accessibility, APIs and components on web, Slack desktop through our Electron app, and Android and iOS mobile.

The work is technically challenging and high stakes. These foundations directly impact the quality of the experience for every one of Slack's millions of users. Your org will set the bar for client performance, reliability, quality, and feature velocity in the era of agentic coding. You will lead a large, multi-disciplinary organization of 50+ people, including managers. You will partner closely with Product and Design to set an ambitious strategy.

This is not a maintenance role. We need someone who can set direction for shared technical foundations and build a culture of engineering excellence.

What You'll Actually Be Doing

• Lead the engineering organization - Own the Application Architecture and Systems engineering organization across web, desktop, and mobile. Hire, develop, and retain engineering managers and senior ICs.
• Set technical strategy - Define and drive the multi-year technical vision and roadmap for Slack's client infrastructure. Partner with your Product counterparts to set ambitious strategy and make clear tradeoffs.
• Raise the bar on engineering excellence - Establish high standards for performance, reliability, quality, and craft in the team's work and culture.
• Evolve development for the agentic era - Reshape how client engineering teams build and ship so they can move faster without sacrificing quality, including with AI coding agents.
• Own shared platforms - Steward the frameworks, components, design-system foundations, and internal client APIs that every Slack product team depends on.
• Champion accessibility - Make accessibility a first-class part of how Slack is built.
• Partner across the company - Collaborate with executive peers in Product, Design, and Engineering across Slack and Salesforce to align priorities and resolve dependencies.
• Build a connected, global team - Unite a distributed, hybrid organization into a cohesive, high-performing culture.
• Up-level team performance - In your first 60-90 days, assess the org, set strategy, and raise technical excellence and team performance.

You're Our Person If...

• You have significant experience leading product infrastructure engineering at a company with a complex, large-scale client application.
• You have experience in client infrastructure. Web and mobile are both a plus, but more depth in one is fine.
• You have a track record leading large engineering organizations, including managing managers and coaching senior leaders.
• You can set technical strategy and work with Product and Design to turn it into a roadmap.
• You hold teams to a high bar on performance, reliability, and quality.
• You collaborate well across functions without direct authority over all parties.
• You have a related technical degree.

Even Better If...

• You have experience leading engineering teams through the shift to AI-assisted and agentic development.
• You have led distributed teams through organizational change.
• You have experience with accessibility.
• You have experience with Electron native desktop applications.
• You have experience building or scaling design systems.