Director, Engineering (Enterprise)

Zapier3 weeks ago

Location

NAMER

Workplace

Remote

Type

Full Time

Salary

USD 220,000 – 280,000

Level

Director

Role

Engineering Manager

Posted

Jul 2, 2026

Full TimeRemoteDirector

The role

Summary

Director of Engineering leading Zapier's Enterprise engineering organization, responsible for identity, access management, audit infrastructure, and AI governance systems. This role shapes the trust infrastructure that enables enterprises to safely let AI agents act on their systems, requiring deep expertise in governance architecture, reliability at scale, and AI-native engineering practices. You'll drive strategic roadmaps, lead organizational transitions, and partner closely with product, design, and go-to-market teams to build world-class governance infrastructure for the enterprise automation platform.

What you'll do

Governance Vision and Technical Strategy: Define and drive the strategy and roadmap for Zapier's Enterprise Governance initiative in partnership with Product and Design leaders, explicitly aligned with company-wide agent strategy. Own the organization's technical point of view on identity, access control, audit, and policy at the enterprise scale. Make critical staffing and investment trade-off decisions across initiatives, serving as the arbiter when individual teams cannot make decisions that require organization-wide perspective.

AI-Native Governance and Engineering Practice: Own the technical roadmap for systems enabling enterprises to govern AI agents, including agent identity and permissions, audit trails for agent-executed actions, and scalable policy controls beyond human-only usage. Define what safe, accountable AI-native engineering practice looks like for your teams, including code review standards, on-call ownership models, and quality bars for agent-authored code. Identify and implement AI-powered tooling that accelerates your teams' delivery velocity and quality.

Reliability and Trust Infrastructure: Be accountable for the reliability of Zapier's identity, audit, and administrative infrastructure, including Tier-1 services that enterprise customers depend on most. Build bench strength and resilience across critical systems as the team scales. Step in during major incidents to coordinate cross-functional resources and set stakeholder expectations when severity demands senior leadership involvement.

Customer and Cross-Organization Partnership: Partner directly with Sales, Customer Success, and enterprise customers to translate deal requirements and support needs into a defensible engineering roadmap. Take ownership of cross-organizational technical initiatives touching identity and governance, including new shared infrastructure built with adjacent organizations. Maintain balance between reactive customer requests and foundational infrastructure investment.

Team Building, Development, and Talent Management: Build and develop a strong enterprise engineering organization through strategic hiring and talent acquisition. Ensure managers and individual contributors have clear growth paths, consistent feedback, and opportunities to develop into the next generation of engineering leaders. Own the output and outcomes of your teams and the systems they operate.

What we look for

Technical

Identity and Access Management ArchitectureDeep expertise in designing identity systems, access control models, and authentication/authorization infrastructure at enterprise scale. Experience building or leading systems handling identity federation, role-based access control (RBAC), and permission enforcement across complex multi-tenant environments.

Audit and Compliance InfrastructureProven experience building audit trails, compliance logging systems, and governance infrastructure that meets enterprise security and regulatory requirements. Understanding of how audit systems scale with action volume and the technical tradeoffs between comprehensive logging and system performance.

AI Agent Governance SystemsExperience architecting systems that govern AI/agent behavior, including action authorization, permission boundaries, and policy enforcement for autonomous systems. Understanding of how traditional identity and access control must evolve for AI agent workflows.

Reliability Engineering and On-Call OperationsTrack record establishing strong service ownership models, on-call practices, and quality bars in fast-growing engineering organizations. Experience building resilient systems, defining SLIs/SLOs, and managing reliability as a competitive advantage across infrastructure and application layers.

Distributed Systems and InfrastructureSolid foundation in distributed systems concepts, microservices architecture, and infrastructure that scales reliably. Experience with system design, performance optimization, and managing complexity in large-scale systems handling millions of actions.

Education

Computer Science or Related FieldBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field. Equivalent professional experience in engineering leadership with demonstrable expertise in systems design and software architecture is acceptable.

Experience

Engineering Leadership at Scale8+ years of software engineering experience with 3+ years in senior engineering leadership roles (engineering manager, staff engineer, or director level). Demonstrated experience leading teams of managers and technical leads through organizational transitions and growth.

Enterprise Product ExperienceProven experience building products or infrastructure for enterprise customers, with firsthand knowledge of what 'enterprise-ready' means in practice. Track record of working directly with sales teams, customer success organizations, and customers to translate requirements into technical roadmaps.

Organizational Leadership During TransitionDemonstrated success leading engineering organizations through structural change including shifting operating models, redefining ownership, and integrating new ways of working. Experience maintaining team trust and output velocity through ambiguity and organizational uncertainty.

AI/ML Systems or Agent TechnologyExperience working with AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex) or AI orchestration tools in production engineering workflows. Demonstrated point of view on how AI-authored code changes engineering practices around code review, quality standards, and on-call ownership.

Skills

Required skills

Strategic Technical ThinkingAbility to set independent technical direction, partner with Product and Design as a peer, and push back on roadmaps when technical or operational reality demands it. Strong judgment on governance, identity, and access control decisions with real-world consequences.

Organizational LeadershipProven ability to build, scale, and develop engineering organizations. Experience hiring, mentoring, and developing the next generation of engineering leaders. Skill in bringing teams through ambiguity while maintaining trust and output quality.

Data-Driven Decision MakingEstablished approaches to measuring delivery velocity, reliability, and quality using metrics and data. Ability to use data to make real investment tradeoffs, not just produce dashboards. Experience managing balance between reactive work and proactive infrastructure investment.

Customer and Stakeholder OrientationTrack record of direct engagement with sales, customer success, and enterprise customers to understand enterprise requirements. Ability to be a credible, responsive partner to go-to-market teams while protecting foundational infrastructure work from reactive pressure.

Communication and AlignmentSkilled in clear, proactive communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Comfort writing by default to align teams on vision, tradeoffs, and results. Ability to communicate effectively across levels from individual contributors to executives.

AI-Native Engineering PracticeHands-on experience using AI coding agents and having a concrete point of view on how they change engineering practices. Ability to embed accountability into AI-assisted workflows rather than lowering quality bars. Experience defining what good engineering looks like in the age of agent-authored code.

Efficiency and Leverage MindsetDefault to AI-first thinking in personal work and team practices. Ability to build systems and practices that compound impact over time. Focus on engineering efficiency and sustainable delivery rather than relying on heroics.

Nice to have

B2B SaaS Platform ExperienceBackground building infrastructure or products for multi-tenant SaaS platforms, particularly with complex enterprise requirements around isolation, security, and compliance.

Workflow Automation or Integration Platform KnowledgeFamiliarity with workflow automation, integration platforms, or API orchestration. Understanding of the technical challenges in connecting disparate systems safely and reliably at scale.

Cloud Infrastructure ExpertiseDeep experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and building scalable, reliable systems on modern cloud infrastructure. Experience with containerization, orchestration, and infrastructure-as-code practices.

Security and Compliance ExpertiseBackground in security architecture, compliance frameworks (SOC2, ISO27001), or building security-critical systems. Understanding of enterprise security requirements and how to build compliance into systems from the ground up.

Incident Management and ResilienceDemonstrated experience managing and learning from major incidents. Expertise in building incident response processes, post-incident reviews, and using incidents as opportunities for organizational learning.

Compensation & benefits

Salary

USD 220,000 – 280,000 (annual)

Stock options

Available

Benefits

Equity and Stock Options

Significant equity participation in Zapier as a director-level leadership role, allowing you to benefit from company growth and success alongside the founding team and other leaders.

Remote-First Work Environment

Fully remote position with flexibility to work from anywhere in North America. Zapier maintains a mature remote work culture with strong asynchronous communication practices and distributed team support.

Professional Development Budget

Support for continuous learning, conferences, training, and professional development opportunities to stay current with emerging technologies and leadership best practices.

Comprehensive Health Coverage

Medical, dental, and vision insurance options with company subsidies. Mental health and wellness support services included in benefits package.

Flexible Time Off Policy

Generous flexible paid time off allowing for work-life balance. Flexible scheduling accommodates personal needs while maintaining team coordination and delivery commitments.

Co-working Space Allowance

Optional support for co-working space memberships or home office setup reimbursement to support remote work productivity and local community connection.

Parental Leave

Comprehensive parental leave benefits for birth parents and non-birth parents, supporting family growth and time for new family members.

Retirement Planning

401(k) retirement savings plan with employer matching contributions to support long-term financial planning.

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Zapier is an online automation tool that connects your favorite apps, such as Gmail, Slack, Mailchimp, and over 3,000 more, to automate repetitive tasks without coding or relying on developers to build the integration.

San Francisco, CA, USAFounded 2010zapier.com

Tech Stack

Languages

PythonTypeScript/JavaScriptGo

Frameworks

DjangoReactgRPC

Databases

PostgreSQLRedisElasticsearch

Tools

KubernetesDockerTerraformGitHubDatadog

Other

AI Coding AgentsIdentity and Authorization SystemsAudit and Compliance LoggingAgent Orchestration PlatformsCloud Platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)

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