Director of Platform Engineering

Job description

About SailGP The Rolex SailGP Championship is the most exciting racing on water, where anything can happen in short, adrenaline-fueled battles between national teams at iconic stadium destinations worldwide. Top athletes fly in identical high-tech F50 catamarans faster than the wind, at speeds in excess of 100km/h (60mph). Founded in 2018, SailGP is one of the world’s fastest-growing sports and entertainment properties, now in its sixth season. SailGP also races for a better future, championing a world powered by nature. Underpinning the organisation’s purpose-driven agenda is a diversification of the league, with the goal of immediately progressing gender equity and inclusivity. SailGP is a global organisation with defined values that shape the culture of its team – Deliver Quality and Consistency; Evolve with Focus; Make it Count; Stand Together and Strike a Balance. 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 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 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 , 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.