Director of Platform Operations – Infrastructure

As the Director of Platform Operations, you will lead Upwork’s foundational infrastructure, ensuring resilience, scalability, and innovation. This role involves overseeing a global team driving initiatives in Kubernetes modernization, CI/CD platform services, developer tooling, and AI/ML infrastructure enablement. You will define and execute roadmaps for secure, multi-tenant infrastructure, drive automation, and partner with AI platform teams to operationalize next-gen infrastructure. This high-impact leadership position requires strategic vision and deep collaboration to scale Upwork’s platform capabilities.

Must Have

• Proven experience (10+ years) in software engineering
• 3+ years leading high-performing infrastructure or platform teams
• Deep technical expertise in cloud-native systems
• Deep technical expertise in Kubernetes
• Deep technical expertise in CI/CD platforms
• Deep technical expertise in distributed systems operations
• Experience designing and scaling AI/ML platforms for model training, deployment, and monitoring
• Demonstrated success in building reusable, self-service platforms that accelerate developer productivity
• A growth-minded leader with exceptional communication and collaboration skills
• Ability to report to an office in Toronto 3 days per week

About the Role

As the Director of Platform Operations, you’ll lead the evolution of Upwork’s foundational infrastructure, ensuring our platform’s resilience, scalability, and innovation-readiness. You’ll oversee a globally distributed team driving initiatives across Kubernetes modernization, CI/CD platform services, developer tooling, and AI/ML infrastructure enablement. This high-impact leadership role requires strategic vision, operational excellence, and deep collaboration across engineering, product, and business teams to scale Upwork’s next-generation platform capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead global operations for core infrastructure platforms, including Kubernetes (EKS), developer environments, CI/CD systems, and enterprise integrations, ensuring performance, reliability, and security.
• Define and execute the roadmap for secure, multi-tenant infrastructure that powers engineering and AI/ML workloads across the company.
• Drive automation for build and release processes, incident response, and compliance readiness while maintaining strong reliability standards.
• Oversee platform-wide observability, including logging, monitoring, distributed tracing, and SLO instrumentation.
• Partner with AI platform teams to operationalize next-gen infrastructure such as GPU provisioning, MCP/Agent Marketplace, and model-serving environments.
• Recruit, mentor, and scale a high-performing, globally distributed team that fosters innovation and technical excellence.
• Represent infrastructure operations in strategic planning and architectural reviews, influencing company-wide platform investments and direction.

What It Takes to Catch Our Eye

• Proven experience (10+ years) in software engineering with 3+ years leading high-performing infrastructure or platform teams.
• Deep technical expertise in cloud-native systems, Kubernetes, CI/CD platforms, and distributed systems operations.
• Experience designing and scaling AI/ML platforms for model training, deployment, and monitoring.
• Demonstrated success in building reusable, self-service platforms that accelerate developer productivity.
• A growth-minded leader with exceptional communication and collaboration skills who thrives in cross-functional environments.

This position will initially be employed through a partner to ensure a seamless hiring process while we establish the hub. Once the hub is established, there may be opportunities to transition to employment with Upwork depending on business needs and other requirements. While employed by the partner, you’ll work as part of Upwork’s team, with access to our resources, culture, and growth opportunities.

To learn more about how Upwork processes and protects your personal information as part of the application process, please review our Global Job Applicant Privacy Notice

Create a Job Alert

Interested in building your career at Upwork? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.

Create alert

Apply for this job

• indicates a required field

Autofill with MyGreenhouse

First Name*

Last Name*

Email*

Phone

Country

Phone

Location (City)*

Locate me

Resume/CV

AttachAttach

Dropbox

Google Drive

Enter manuallyEnter manually

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

LinkedIn Profile, Portfolio, Website, Other

Individuals in this role must be within reasonable commuting distance of Toronto, and will be required to report to an office 3 days per week (acknowledgement)

Select...

Submit application