Director of Engineering, Platform (Runtime & Stateful Systems) Location San Francisco, California Employment Type Full time Location Type Hybrid Department Engineering Compensation $300K – $450K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus • Performance bonus: up to 20% of base Our openings span more than one career level. The provided salary depends on many factors, such as work experience and transferable skills, business needs and impact, location, and market demands. We're always willing to offer above our posted ranges for exceptional talent. If you feel like Sentry is the right place for you, apply and let's make it work!
🏢 About Sentry
Software runs the world and the pace is faster than ever. Sentry helps developers fix errors and performance issues before users notice, so teams can spend less time firefighting and more time building. Trusted by 200,000+ organizations, Sentry is today’s application monitoring standard and our team is building its AI-native future.
🎯 The Role
We're looking for an experienced engineering leader to own one of the most critical areas within Platform: the runtime and stateful systems Sentry runs on. You'll lead multiple engineering teams and Staff engineers responsible for OLTP and OLAP databases, real-time compute and stream processing, blob storage, and distributed caching. These systems power Sentry's products, including Seer, and are mission-critical to the business. When they perform well, every product team moves faster. When they don't, the whole company feels the impact. You'll set the technical vision across these systems, lead significant architectural changes, and develop the engineering leaders and teams responsible for building and operating them. This role requires someone who brings deep technical judgment, thinks strategically, and has a track record of driving complex engineering initiatives from concept through execution. You'll have the opportunity to shape both the technical direction and organizational growth of a critical part of Sentry's platform as our products and infrastructure continue to evolve. This is a hybrid role based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with an expectation of working from our San Francisco office three days per week.
✅ Key Responsibilities
Lead multiple engineering teams and Staff engineers responsible for the runtime and stateful systems supporting Sentry, Seer, and the products built on top of them.
Set the technical vision and strategy across multiple systems, identifying opportunities to evolve our architecture as the business scales.
Drive significant architectural changes and technical initiatives, making informed tradeoffs around scalability, reliability, performance, cost, and complexity.
Provide technical leadership across teams, working closely with senior engineers to evaluate architectural decisions, challenge assumptions, and establish technical direction.
Own the execution and operational excellence of mission-critical systems, ensuring teams deliver reliable, scalable, and high-performing platform components.
Build and develop a strong engineering organization, including hiring, mentoring, and growing engineering managers and senior technical leaders.
Foster a culture of engineering excellence, technical accountability, and continuous improvement.
Partner across Platform, Infrastructure, and Product to align priorities, navigate ambiguity, and deliver complex, cross-functional initiatives.
Anticipate evolving product and infrastructure needs, identifying opportunities to build new platform capabilities and improve existing systems.
📌 Required Qualifications
12+ years of experience in backend, platform, or infrastructure engineering, with significant experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.
Director-level engineering management experience, or equivalent senior engineering leadership experience overseeing multiple teams at comparable scale and complexity.
Deep technical expertise in at least one of the following domains: OLTP databases OLAP databases Real-time compute and stream processing Blob/object storage Distributed caching
Demonstrated experience driving significant architectural changes, including evaluating technical tradeoffs, establishing direction, and leading implementation.
Strong technical judgment and the ability to engage deeply in architectural discussions across multiple distributed systems domains.
Proven track record of leading complex, cross-functional engineering initiatives from strategy through execution, with measurable technical or business impact.
Experience hiring, developing, and leading engineering managers and senior technical talent.
Strong communication and organizational leadership skills, with the ability to articulate technical concepts, influence senior stakeholders, and align teams around a shared strategy.
Experience operating mission-critical infrastructure with a strong understanding of reliability, scalability, performance, and operational efficiency.
🎁 Benefits
Compensation: $300K – $450K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus • Performance bonus: up to 20% of base
