Summary
The Director of Platform Engineering is a senior technical leader responsible for the long-term technological vision, development, and evolution of SailGP’s digital and data ecosystem. This role oversees the production software powering our digital estate (e.g. SailGP.com, SailGP App/ Headsets, SailGPInsights, SailGP Media Portal, Fan Simulator), and betting applications; they are responsible for the entire technology stack supporting these products.
As a Director, you will bridge the gap between business strategy and technical execution, partnering with executive leadership across the Digital and Technology teams. You will build and scale a high‑performing engineering organisation, oversee architecture and engineering standards, manage vendor relationships, and drive day‑to‑day AI automation. This position requires a strong blend of strategic foresight, people leadership, and a deep understanding of advanced engineering practices to deliver a world‑class digital experience for a global audience.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Leadership & People Management
- Team Building: Recruit, mentor, and lead a high‑performing, multi‑disciplinary team of software engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and engineering excellence.
- Technical Vision: Define and execute the long‑term technical roadmap and architecture strategy, ensuring alignment with SailGP’s broader commercial and digital business objectives.
- Stakeholder Alignment: Act as a strategic partner to the Group Technology Director to prioritise initiatives and translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Budget & Vendor Management: Oversee the software engineering budget, evaluate third‑party technologies, and manage relationships with external development agencies and SaaS vendors.
- Collaboration: Work closely with Director of Performance Engineering and Director of Liveline to ensure the end‑to‑end data pipeline is fit for purpose.
Engineering Excellence & Technical Execution
- System Architecture: Guide architectural decisions and establish technical standards across the organisation, ensuring scalability, security, and high availability for platforms like SailGP.com, the SailGP App/ Headsets, Fan Simulator and SailGP Insights.
- Production Ownership: Oversee the maintenance and evolution of production software, implementing best‑practice with an AI‑first software engineering approach (agile methodologies, unit testing, refactoring, rigorous code reviews, and CI/CD pipelines).
- Performance & SEO: Direct technical strategies for concurrency, profiling, and performance optimisation in high‑traffic, live‑event environments. Ensure all platforms adhere to foundational and technical SEO principles.
- AI & Automation: Lead the evaluation and implementation of day‑to‑day AI automation tools to improve development workflows, content delivery, and user experiences.
Innovation & Rapid Prototyping
- UX & Front‑End Strategy: Champion strong UX design principles and integrate complex front‑end code dependencies, ensuring technical solutions provide intuitive, engaging user journeys.
- Platform Expertise: Leverage deep experience in enterprise headless CMS platforms (such as Contentful) to create flexible, omnichannel content delivery architectures.
- Agile Adaptation: Maintain the team’s ability to rapidly prototype new features, POCs (Proofs of Concept), and adjust technical direction quickly in response to internal feedback and shifting market trends.
About You
Experience & Technical Skills
- Senior Leadership: 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3+ years in a Director or Senior Engineering Management role overseeing multi‑disciplinary teams.
- Advanced Coding Foundation: Deep foundational expertise in common front‑end technologies and architecture. Ability to dive into the code for high‑level troubleshooting and code reviews.
- Infrastructure: Expertise in architecting cloud‑native infrastructure, leveraging SQL and time‑series databases to ensure system reliability and performance at scale.
- Data Processing: Proven track record of leading teams to build and scale distributed architectures that handle massive datasets, focusing on low‑latency processing and efficient data governance.
- AI: Proven track record of scaling enterprise‑grade AI infrastructure and software development practices to ensure we have a modern and efficient ways of working.
- Scale & Performance: Proven track record of designing, scaling, and maintaining high‑traffic consumer‑facing applications and production environments.
- Content Platforms: Deep experience designing architecture around headless or decoupled content platforms, such as Contentful.
Leadership & Problem Solving
- Commercial Acumen: Strong ability to connect engineering output to business ROI, balancing technical debt with the need for speed‑to‑market.
- UX & Design: Strong understanding and experience of UX design.
- Communication: Exceptional executive‑level communication skills; capable of confidently translating complex technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders and C‑suite executives.
Personal Attributes
- A visionary leader who is self‑motivated and capable of working autonomously, while actively empowering and trusting their team.
- Thrives in a fast‑paced, high‑pressure, live‑event sports environment and can adapt quickly to changing circumstances.
- Calm, decisive, and highly effective under pressure.
Location
SailGP HQ in London, United Kingdom. Hybrid working model with a minimum of three days per week in the London office.
- Occasional travel to global events may be required.
SailGP is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace committed to building a team culture that celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion.
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