Director of Platform Operations – Infrastructure

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s human and AI-powered work marketplace that connects businesses with highly skilled, AI-enabled independent talent from across the globe. From entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 enterprises, companies rely on Upwork’s trusted platform and its mindful AI companion, Uma, to find and hire expert talent, leverage AI-powered work solutions, and drive business transformation. With on-demand access to professionals spanning more than 10,000 skills across AI & machine learning, software development, sales & marketing, customer support, finance & accounting, and more, Upwork enables businesses of all sizes to scale, innovate, and build agile teams for the age of AI and beyond.

Upwork’s platform has facilitated more than $25 billion in economic opportunity for talent around the world. Learn more at Upwork.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X.

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.

Come change how the world works.

At Upwork, you’ll shape the future of work for a global, remote-first workforce, creating economic opportunities for professionals worldwide. While we have a physical office in Palo Alto, we currently hire full-time employees in 34 U.S. states, making it easier than ever to join our mission from wherever you call home.

Our culture is built on trust, risk-taking, customer focus, and excellence, all in service of our core mission: to create economic opportunities so people have better lives. We embrace authenticity and inclusion, encouraging everyone to bring their whole selves to work. Personal and professional growth is a priority here, supported through development programs, mentorship, and our Upwork Belonging Communities.

We’re proud to offer benefits that go beyond the basics, including comprehensive medical coverage for you and your family, unlimited PTO, a 401(k) plan with matching, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Visit our Life at Upwork page to learn more about our values, working principles, and the overall employee experience.

Ready to help shape the future of work? Check out our Careers page to learn more about opportunities at Upwork.

Upwork is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, or other legally protected characteristics under federal, state, or local law.

Please note that a criminal background check may be required once a conditional job offer is made. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered in accordance with applicable law, including the California Fair Chance Act and local Fair Chance ordinances.

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