Top Benefits
Health Care Benefits
401(k) Plan
Remote First - Work From Anywhere
About the role
Who you are
- 10+ years of engineering leadership experience, including leading managers of managers
- 5+ years building or scaling cloud-native, infrastructure, or platform engineering products
- Deep familiarity with Kubernetes and the Cloud Native ecosystem
- Experience building SaaS control planes or distributed systems at scale
- Strong understanding of APIs, SDKs, declarative systems, and extensibility frameworks
- Proven experience growing ecosystem-driven products (marketplaces, providers, plugins, or integrations)
- Track record of delivering reliable production services with strong uptime and performance standards
- Ability to operate strategically while diving deep technically
- Experience with Crossplane and/or Kubernetes
- Background in platform engineering or internal developer platforms
- Experience building multi-tenant control plane architectures
- Startup experience in high-growth infrastructure companies
- Passion for programmable infrastructure and AI-native systems
What the job involves
- Upbound is building the control plane for the modern enterprise. As the company behind Crossplane, the open-source CNCF project that extends Kubernetes into an AI-native cloud control plane. Upbound enables organizations to compose, manage, and operate infrastructure and services through declarative, programmable control planes.
- Upbound Cloud delivers hosted, multi-tenant control planes that power platform engineering teams at scale. Our vision extends beyond infrastructure management into an AI-native Control Fabric — where control planes become programmable, extensible, and ecosystem-driven. As we scale into the next phase of growth, we are hiring a Director to lead our Control Planes & Ecosystem Group
- As Director of Control Planes & Ecosystem, you will own the strategy and execution for the customer-facing control plane experience across:
- Crossplane: Upstream work and contributions for the open source Crossplane Project
- Upbound Crossplane: Upbound’s Enterprise Distribution of Crossplane
- Upbound Marketplace: The place where Users and Customers discover content
- Upbound Official Providers and Extensions: Development and maintenance of Providers, Add-Ons, Functions, and more
- Partner Integrations: Development of Extensions with third party partners
- This is a senior leadership role responsible for scaling teams, defining long-term architecture strategy, and shaping how enterprises adopt programmable control planes through a thriving ecosystem
- You will lead multiple managers and high-performing engineering teams, driving cohesion across product and user experiences
- Control Plane & Enterprise Strategy
- Help define and drive the long-term vision for hosted control planes and ecosystem extensibility
- Ensure Marketplace, UXP, APIs, and Extensions operate as a cohesive control plane experience
- Shape how platform engineering teams compose infrastructure through Crossplane-powered abstractions
- Drive reliability, scalability, and production-grade control planes at scale
- Ecosystem Leadership
- Own the strategy for Upbound Marketplace as the distribution layer for Crossplane providers, extensions, and control plane building blocks
- Grow and strengthen the provider ecosystem (ISVs, cloud providers, platform partners)
- Enable extension frameworks that allow customers and partners to build on top of Upbound control planes
- Ensure ecosystem experiences are intuitive, secure, and enterprise-ready
- Organizational Leadership
- Lead managers and managers-of-managers across multiple teams
- Scale engineering org structure to support product velocity and ecosystem expansion
- Establish operational rigor: roadmap planning, delivery predictability, uptime SLAs, and production excellence
- Foster a culture of ownership, innovation, and deep technical craftsmanship
- Cross-Functional Influence
- Partner closely with Product, GTM, Alliances, and Customer Success to align ecosystem strategy with revenue goals
- Translate enterprise customer needs into scalable control plane capabilities
- Represent engineering in executive-level conversations around ecosystem expansion and AI-native infrastructure
Benefits
- Health Care Benefits
- 401(k) Plan
- Remote First - Work From Anywhere
- Flexible Hours & PTO
- Home Office Stipend
- Equity
About Upbound
Software Development
51-200
The cloud service providers of today run their interfaces and services with control planes. They’re able to enable self-service and flexibility to their customers without letting go of control, governance, reliability or security. Meanwhile, enterprises continue to run their cloud infrastructure with config — resulting in instability, security risks and low productivity.
Upbound is democratizing the best kept secret in cloud computing — the control plane. By leveraging custom APIs, cloud engineers are no longer hindered by configuration drift, multiplying workspaces and frustrated developers. With Upbound, platform engineers get centralized control, governance and stability and developers get freedom of self-service.
Upbound is the creator and maintainer of the popular open source project Crossplane, a framework for building cloud native control planes. The company is a Series B startup and has raised $69M in total funding. Upbound’s backers include GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital and Intel Capital. For more information, please visit upbound.io.
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Top Benefits
Health Care Benefits
401(k) Plan
Remote First - Work From Anywhere
About the role
Who you are
- 10+ years of engineering leadership experience, including leading managers of managers
- 5+ years building or scaling cloud-native, infrastructure, or platform engineering products
- Deep familiarity with Kubernetes and the Cloud Native ecosystem
- Experience building SaaS control planes or distributed systems at scale
- Strong understanding of APIs, SDKs, declarative systems, and extensibility frameworks
- Proven experience growing ecosystem-driven products (marketplaces, providers, plugins, or integrations)
- Track record of delivering reliable production services with strong uptime and performance standards
- Ability to operate strategically while diving deep technically
- Experience with Crossplane and/or Kubernetes
- Background in platform engineering or internal developer platforms
- Experience building multi-tenant control plane architectures
- Startup experience in high-growth infrastructure companies
- Passion for programmable infrastructure and AI-native systems
What the job involves
- Upbound is building the control plane for the modern enterprise. As the company behind Crossplane, the open-source CNCF project that extends Kubernetes into an AI-native cloud control plane. Upbound enables organizations to compose, manage, and operate infrastructure and services through declarative, programmable control planes.
- Upbound Cloud delivers hosted, multi-tenant control planes that power platform engineering teams at scale. Our vision extends beyond infrastructure management into an AI-native Control Fabric — where control planes become programmable, extensible, and ecosystem-driven. As we scale into the next phase of growth, we are hiring a Director to lead our Control Planes & Ecosystem Group
- As Director of Control Planes & Ecosystem, you will own the strategy and execution for the customer-facing control plane experience across:
- Crossplane: Upstream work and contributions for the open source Crossplane Project
- Upbound Crossplane: Upbound’s Enterprise Distribution of Crossplane
- Upbound Marketplace: The place where Users and Customers discover content
- Upbound Official Providers and Extensions: Development and maintenance of Providers, Add-Ons, Functions, and more
- Partner Integrations: Development of Extensions with third party partners
- This is a senior leadership role responsible for scaling teams, defining long-term architecture strategy, and shaping how enterprises adopt programmable control planes through a thriving ecosystem
- You will lead multiple managers and high-performing engineering teams, driving cohesion across product and user experiences
- Control Plane & Enterprise Strategy
- Help define and drive the long-term vision for hosted control planes and ecosystem extensibility
- Ensure Marketplace, UXP, APIs, and Extensions operate as a cohesive control plane experience
- Shape how platform engineering teams compose infrastructure through Crossplane-powered abstractions
- Drive reliability, scalability, and production-grade control planes at scale
- Ecosystem Leadership
- Own the strategy for Upbound Marketplace as the distribution layer for Crossplane providers, extensions, and control plane building blocks
- Grow and strengthen the provider ecosystem (ISVs, cloud providers, platform partners)
- Enable extension frameworks that allow customers and partners to build on top of Upbound control planes
- Ensure ecosystem experiences are intuitive, secure, and enterprise-ready
- Organizational Leadership
- Lead managers and managers-of-managers across multiple teams
- Scale engineering org structure to support product velocity and ecosystem expansion
- Establish operational rigor: roadmap planning, delivery predictability, uptime SLAs, and production excellence
- Foster a culture of ownership, innovation, and deep technical craftsmanship
- Cross-Functional Influence
- Partner closely with Product, GTM, Alliances, and Customer Success to align ecosystem strategy with revenue goals
- Translate enterprise customer needs into scalable control plane capabilities
- Represent engineering in executive-level conversations around ecosystem expansion and AI-native infrastructure
Benefits
- Health Care Benefits
- 401(k) Plan
- Remote First - Work From Anywhere
- Flexible Hours & PTO
- Home Office Stipend
- Equity
About Upbound
Software Development
51-200
The cloud service providers of today run their interfaces and services with control planes. They’re able to enable self-service and flexibility to their customers without letting go of control, governance, reliability or security. Meanwhile, enterprises continue to run their cloud infrastructure with config — resulting in instability, security risks and low productivity.
Upbound is democratizing the best kept secret in cloud computing — the control plane. By leveraging custom APIs, cloud engineers are no longer hindered by configuration drift, multiplying workspaces and frustrated developers. With Upbound, platform engineers get centralized control, governance and stability and developers get freedom of self-service.
Upbound is the creator and maintainer of the popular open source project Crossplane, a framework for building cloud native control planes. The company is a Series B startup and has raised $69M in total funding. Upbound’s backers include GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital and Intel Capital. For more information, please visit upbound.io.