Director of Engineering, Release Observability

About the Job

We’re looking for a Director of Engineering to lead the Release Observability product engineering group. LaunchDarkly is a comprehensive feature management platform which that equips software teams to measurably reduce risk of shipping bad software or AI applications. Specifically the Release Observability group builds feature observability, runtime release guardrails and observability features and products. This is a strategic, high-impact leadership role — ideal for someone who’s built and scaled observability products, infrastructure and organizations at scale, and knows how to inspire world-class engineering teams.

You’ll be responsible for setting vision and driving execution across multiple engineering teams, while collaborating deeply with Product, Design, and Go-To-Market stakeholders to ensure our customers can trust and act on the data we provide.

Responsibilities

• Execution: Guide engineering strategy and execution across our Release Observability teams, including collaboration with other product engineering and cross-functional groups to deliver great products for our customers
• Technical Excellence: Partner with product, design and key engineering leaders to build products and platforms that are statistically rigorous, intuitive, scale well, and integrate well with 3rd parties
• Organizational Building: Manage and mentor senior leaders, cultivate high-performing, high-agency, inclusive teams, and scale the org to meet evolving product needs.
• Product Direction: Provide critical input on roadmap and architectural decisions, ensuring our product serves customers well and is resilient, performant, and flexible.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Collaborate closely with Product, Design, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success to define success metrics (particularly $ARR), respond to customer needs, and ensure successful launches.
• Recruiting and Retention of Top Talent: Own hiring strategy — spanning decisions on new locations to changing interview loops to building a diverse pipeline and inclusive culture that also embraces experimentation with AI-tooling.
• Principled Values: Model and evangelize a leadership style rooted in transparency, ownership, curiosity, and a bias for action.

You are

• A domain expert in observability and release principles with a proven record of architecting large-scale systems and shipping products customers love.
• A seasoned people leader with experience managing managers and growing senior engineers into leaders.
• A cross-functional collaborator with a track record of working closely with Product, GTM, and Design teams to shape product strategy.
• A strategic thinker who connects engineering decisions to business goals and customer outcomes.
• A culture carrier who brings self-awareness, humility, and a learning mindset to the table — and knows how to build those values into an organization.
• A talent magnet who knows what great engineering looks like and how to consistently hire and retain it.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in engineering leadership roles, including at least 2+ years leading Managers or multiple engineering teams.
• Experience with observability systems, statistical analysis pipelines, and event-based metrics infrastructure.
• Strong architectural understanding of data platforms, backend services, and cloud-native infrastructure.
• Demonstrated success scaling teams through multiple phases of company growth.
• Prior experience at a product-led SaaS or DevTools company is a plus.

Pay

Target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones* for Level M5:

• Zone 1: San Francisco/Bay Area or NYC Metropolitan Area, Boston, Seattle - $262,000 - $361,000**
• Zone 2: Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Austin, Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago - $236,000 - $325,000**
• Zone 3: All other US locations - $223,000 - $307,000**

Inclusive of 15% Bonus Target

LaunchDarkly operates from a place of high trust and transparency; we are happy t