Sr. Engineering Manager

Upbound is redefining how modern infrastructure is built for the Agentic AI Era. We’re the creators and primary maintainers of Crossplane , and we’re building the Intelligent Control Plane —a new platform layer that makes infrastructure programmable, autonomous, and composable . Our mission is to power the AI-native enterprise with a foundational platform layer that helps teams provision, operate, and adapt infrastructure at scale—so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents . We partner with leading cloud providers, ISVs, and open-source communities to help organizations move faster with greater confidence. Today, Upbound supports Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across 100+ countries . Crossplane has surpassed 100M+ downloads and is used by 1,000+ teams worldwide . We’re a Series B company backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital , and we’ve raised $69M to date. Learn more at upbound.io 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 Sr. Engineering Manager 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. In this role, you will… 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. You are a good fit if you have… - 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. It is a plus if… - 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. #LI-REMOTE Why Upbound? - At Upbound, you’ll help shape the systems and strategies that drive predictable, scalable growth in a product-led company embracing usage-based models. - If you're excited to build from the ground up, work with cutting-edge cloud technologies, and directly impact how revenue is generated and scaled—this is your seat at the table. About Upbound - Upbound is pioneering infrastructure platforms for the Agentic AI Era, serving Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across more than 100 countries. - The company empowers infrastructure and platform teams with Intelligent Control Planes - based on Kubernetes and Crossplane - that provision, operate, and adapt so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents. - Upbound is the creator and primary maintainer of Crossplane, the popular open-source framework for building cloud-native control planes, with over 100 million downloads and adoption by more than 1,000 teams worldwide. - A Series B startup backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, Upbound has raised $69M to date. - For more information, visit www.upbound.io.