Senior Director, Platform Engineering

About this role

The Senior Director of Platform Engineering will lead a world-class engineering organization responsible for delivering complete accelerated compute systems that power customized hyperscale datacenter solutions. This executive will oversee a multidisciplinary team including Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Thermal Design, Firmware Engineering, Board and Hardware Development.

This leader will be instrumental in driving the development and sustainment of accelerated compute and standard server platforms from concept through volume production. They will work across a highly collaborative environment, partnering with key stakeholders to ensure alignment with strategic goals.

The Senior Director will build and scale a high-performing team known for technical excellence, rapid time to market, and operational rigor. They will set aggressive yet achievable development schedules, monitor progress closely, balance resources effectively, and drive cross-functional engineering efforts to deliver innovative, high-quality products.

A proven track record of shipping complex systems and fostering a culture of performance, results, and engineering excellence is essential. This executive will serve as a key contributor to both strategy and operations, helping to shape the future of platform engineering at ZT Systems.

RESPONSIBILITIES AND ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

Scope • Build and mentor a highly motivated, enthusiastic, and skilled engineering team.

• Provide strong leadership by encouraging creative problem solving, focusing on employee development and performance, and ensuring that teams continually acquire new technology & management skills.

• Enable ZT with new product designs by understanding server architectures and driving design requirements to meet customer use cases, standards, and specifications.

• Ensure that the system level elements of next generation platform solutions are optimized and tradeoffs are well thought through.

• Direct teams during design, validation; bring up, debug and characterization.

• Bridge FAE, Sales, R&D and third parties from an engineering perspective.

• Drive the development of standard engineering practices and product lifecycle management.

• Implement processes and metrics to ensure that the engineering organization is extremely efficient and focused, and that the product is market ready.

Candidate Profile This executive must be a seasoned engineer and manager with experience developing and shipping a portfolio of innovative products. A technical expert, they will be knowledgeable across all facets of hardware engineering and have proven experience working across functions in an engineering organization. A hands-on leader, this executive must be able to harness creativity and passion, building rapport with and guiding a team of high-performing engineers. They will have demonstrated the ability to implement, manage, and execute scalable processes that result in a high level of performance against schedules and deliverables.

This leader will thrive in a fast-paced atmosphere where everyone is pushing toward a shared ambitious vision. Strong communication skills are essential, as this executive will need to collaborate with technical and business professionals within and outside the company

In terms of the performance and personal competencies required for the position, we would highlight the following:

Knowledge and skills • Excellent strategic acumen and ability to take ideas to reality by working with execution teams.

• Leadership in selecting, building and developing strong innovation driven teams.

• Understand the entire system development lifecycle, including integration, test and validation.

• Understanding of the manufacturing process and can work with leading design and manufacturing teams.

• Excellent communication, social, and leadership skills

• Excellent knowledge of English; both oral and written skills

• Experience and a very good understanding of system hardware, firmware and software as well as strength in system architecture, integration and validation.

Experience • BSEE or similar technical degree

• 15 years of System Design and Development experience or equivalent.

• Proven track record of leading global system development teams

Setting Strategy • The ability to create and articulate an inspiring vision for the organization, not only for the areas s/he is directly responsible for, but the enterprise.

• The inclination to seek and analyze data from a variety of sources to support decisions and to align others with the organization's overall strategy.

• An entrepreneurial and creative approach to developing new, innovative ideas that will stretch the organization and push the boundaries within the industry.

• The ability to effectively balance the desire/need for broad change with an understanding of how much change the organization is capable of handling; to create realistic goals and implementation plans that are achievable and successful.

Executing for Results • The ability to set clear and challenging goals while committing the organization to improved performance; tenacious and accountable in driving results.

• Comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty; the ability to adapt nimbly and lead others through complex situations.

• A risk-taker who seeks data and input from others to foresee possible threats or unintended circumstances from decisions; someone who takes smart risks.

• A leader who is viewed by others as having a high degree of integrity and forethought in his/her approach to making decisions; the ability to act in a transparent and consistent manner while always considering what is best for the organization.

Leading Teams • The ability to attract and recruit top talent, motivate the team, delegate effectively, celebrate diversity within the team, and manage performance; widely viewed as a strong developer of others.

• The ability to persevere in the face of challenges a

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