Director, Platform Engineering (Product Management)

The role

This role combines product management leadership with Group Product Lead responsibilities to shape product strategy for several teams. You will oversee product management execution for cloud-native infrastructure and managed services within the Appian Cloud offering.

What you will do

• Oversee the initiation, planning, execution, and rollout for strategic initiatives.
• Lead the creation and ongoing maintenance of multi-team feature backlogs.
• Initiate and facilitate conversations across business units to reach alignment on strategy and roadmap.
• Build relationships with key business stakeholders.
• Help identify and cultivate the next generation of product management leaders.
• Provide constructive feedback on feature specifications.
• Coach product managers on balancing functional and non-functional enhancements.
• Continuously enhance and improve product management processes and techniques.

Required qualifications

• Currently in a product leadership role or an engineering leadership role interested in switching to product.
• Strong technical background, likely as a former software architect or developer.
• Proven people management skills in guiding product managers to success.
• Passion for backend and infrastructure technologies, especially in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation landscape.
• Experience with cloud-native technologies and Kubernetes.
• Understanding of networking, cross-VPC connectivity, and security and compliance requirements.
• Understanding of data persistence, object storage services, event streaming platforms, and multi-tenant shared services.
• Experience delivering cloud infrastructure features built using AWS services such as EKS, ECR, transit gateways, WAFs, and Global Accelerator.
• Strong interest in the scalability, performance, security, observability, and reliability of distributed systems.
• Excellent communication skills.

Nice to have

• Previous exposure to the infrastructure behind Software-as-a-Service cloud product offerings.
• Previous experience with zero trust connectivity implementations.

Benefits

• Health coverage
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with free mental health support
• Life and disability insurance
• Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
• Retirement/pension plan
• Wellness dollars
• Tuition reimbursement
• Family-forming benefits

About the company

Appian provides AI automation for the most important business processes at the world’s largest organizations. The platform is known for its power, reliability, and scale.