Senior Director, Infrastructure Architecture & Engineering

Job Description

Job Description

Join us in bringing joy to customer experience. Five9 is a leading provider of cloud contact center software, bringing the power of cloud innovation to customers worldwide.

Living our values everyday results in our team-first culture and enables us to innovate, grow, and thrive while enjoying the journey together. We celebrate diversity and foster an inclusive environment, empowering our employees to be their authentic selves.

Five9 is investing in the leadership of its platform function. We want someone who runs this like a software product organization. Infrastructure architects who use code on the side won't make it here.

You will have deployed platforms that real developers consume. Versioned modules. Real release cadence. Deprecation done right. Consumers who pin to interfaces because they trust them. You will have built and run end-to-end pipelines where build, test, security, deploy, observe, rollback, and upgrade are first-class concerns. If you spent your career drawing diagrams and handing them off, this isn't the seat for you.

The infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform function is being reshaped, the team is being built up, and modernization is already in motion. Today the platform work is fragmented across reporting lines and skill sets. The right person walks in expecting that, gets the urgent work stable, and starts shaping the team and the operating model on a clock we can measure.

This is a player-coach leadership role requiring strong technical judgment, hands-on engagement in architecture and engineering practices, and the ability to build teams and systems that scale beyond individual dependency.

What success looks like in your first 120 days

• A working map of the platform estate across our DCs and our cloud footprint, plus a clear-eyed read on the engineering practice you inherited and the team behind it
• A personnel evaluation and a product roadmap, written like a software roadmap and not an architecture deck, that shows how Five9 moves toward an Internal Developer Platform with paved roads, self-service, and end-to-end pipelines, sequenced against budget and the work that's already running
• New engineers ramping into the team, retained engineers in active upskilling, a clear hiring plan in motion
• Platform capabilities delivered end-to-end through the pipeline with real consumers, on-call and incident load redistributed across the team, you stepping out of the critical path

What you bring to Five9

• Proven track record building, scaling, and transforming high-performing engineering organizations
• Experience stabilizing and modernizing under-resourced teams and operational environments
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to build accountability, ownership, and engineering discipline across globally distributed teams
• Proven ability to lead large-scale technical and organizational transformation in complex production environments
• Strong cross-functional leadership and stakeholder management skills across engineering, operations, security, and executive teams
• Ability to mentor senior technical leaders and build scalable, high-performing organizations
• Strong decision-making, prioritization, communication, and conflict resolution skills in high-pressure environments

What you will own

• Own the platform function end-to-end across Openstack and Kubernetes (private cloud), Infrastructure as Code, automation frameworks, shared platform services, and AI compute infrastructure
• Operate the platform as a product for internal engineering teams, driving adoption, self-service, developer experience, standardized platform patterns, and measurable delivery outcomes
• Lead the platform software supply chain, including source control, code review, CI/CD, testing, security validation, artifact management, observability, deployment, rollback, release management, and lifecycle governance
• Define and mature core platform services including observability, secrets management, DNS/DDI, identity, registries, CI/CD tooling, and GPU-enabled platform capabilities supporting AI workloads
• Drive platform architecture and technology direction across Kubernetes, storage, and virtualization including operational hardening, scalability, and modernization initiatives
• Establish scalable operational and engineering practices including SLOs, incident escalation response, change management, on-call health, runbooks, post-incident corrective actions, ADRs, code reviews, and shared ownership models
• Build and develop a high-performing platform engineering organization through strong hiring, leveling, coaching, engineering standards, and organizational design practices
• Partner closely with network, compute, storage, and datacenter operations leadership, security, production operations, cloud engineering, and automation teams to drive aligned platform execution at scale

What We Require

• Proven ability to build, scale, and mature engineering organizations, including hiring, coaching, organizational design, and raising engineering standards
• Strong executive communication skills with the ability to present platform health, reliability, adoption, cost, and roadmap metrics to senior leadership
• Experience leading globally distributed engineering teams and embedded partner resources within a unified operating model
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, business or related field

Technical Skills & Experience

• 10+ years leading platform, infrastructure, or cloud engineering organizations in large-scale production environments, including experience operating platforms as software products
• Strong hands-on software engineering background with experience in Python, Go, or similar languages, along with Infrastructure as Code expertise using Terraform, Ansible, Git, or equivalent tooling
• Deep experience building and operating CI/CD-driven platform environments with integrated testing, deployment, observability, rollback, security validation, and lifecycle management practices
• Strong production-scale experience with on-premises Kubernetes and container platforms, including Rancher, OpenShift, Anthos, or similar technologies
• Experience building and operating Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) focused on self-service capabilities, standardized platform services, and developer adoption
• Strong understanding of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles, including SLOs, error budgets, observability, incident management, and operational reliability practices
• Experience implementing security-as-code, policy-as-code, software supply chain controls, and progressive delivery patterns within CI/CD environments
• Experience operating hybrid and multi-cloud environments, including public cloud, private cloud, virtualization, and AI/GPU-enabled infrastructure platforms

Work Location: This role is fully remote for candidates who reside outside the 30 mile radius of one of our offices. For candidates who reside within a 30 mile radius of one of our offices, this role is Hybrid and would require 3 days a week (T, W, TH) in office.

As part of our continued commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, Five9 supports pay transparency during the entire recruitment process. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate including, but not limited to: skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the job across the United States. Your recruiter can share more about the specific compensation package during your hiring process.

Additionally, the total compensation package for this position may also include an annual performance bonus, stock, and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans.

Our total reward package also includes:

• Health, dental, and vision coverage, beginning on the first day of employment. Five9 covers 100% of the employee portion of the health, dental and vision coverage and shares a high portion of the dependent cost. We also offer Short & Long-Term Disability, Basic Life Insurance, and a 401k saving plan with employer matching.
• Access to an innovative mental health support platform that offers personalized care and resources in areas such as: therapy, coaching and self-guided mindfulness exercises for all covered employees and their covered dependents.
• Generous employee stock purchase plan.
• Paid Time Off, Company paid holidays, paid volunteer hours and 12 weeks paid parental leave.

All compensation and benefits are subject to the requirements and restrictions set forth in the applicable plan documents and any written agreements between the parties.

The US base salary range for this role is below.

$135,900—$448,300 USD

Five9 embraces diversity and is committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills.  The more inclusive we are, the better we are.  Five9 is an equal opportunity employer.

View our privacy policy, including our privacy notice to California residents here: -pt/legal.

Note: Five9 will never request that an applicant send money as a prerequisite for commencing employment with Five9.