Director of Autonomy
•AeroVectHybrid· 24h
💻 Engineering⏰ Full-time👔 Executive💰 $300k-350k📍 San Francisco, US
24h ago
Mechanical Orchard·3 months ago
Mechanical Orchard is reinventing how the world’s most critical software gets modernized. We’re an applied AI company focused on one of the hardest problems in enterprise technology: rewriting complex legacy systems in a way that is provably correct, low risk, and fast enough to matter. By focusing on system behavior rather than code alone, we turn modernization from a high-stakes, failure-prone effort into a repeatable, confidence-building process that unlocks ongoing innovation.
Joining Mechanical Orchard means working on problems that truly matter—to our customers, their businesses, and the people who rely on these systems every day. We’re building technology and methodology that challenge long-standing industry assumptions, prioritizing proof over promises and progress over theatrics. If you care deeply about quality, rigor, and doing the right thing—even when it’s hard—you’ll find your people here.
The Director of Product Infrastructure and Release Engineering is a senior leadership role responsible for the strategy, coherence, and execution of Mechanical Orchard’s infrastructure and release capabilities—spanning infrastructure products, installation and deployment workflows, and operational enablement for customers and forward-deployed engineering teams.
In this role you will:
Report to the VP of Engineering, providing strategic direction, product thinking, and cross-functional alignment across Platform, Forward-deployed Engineering, Sales, Security, and Product Management.
Manage the Product Infrastructure and Release Engineering teams.
Ensure that the Imogen Platform is not merely “delivered,” but designed as a scalable, repeatable, and evolving product surface that accelerates customer adoption and long-term platform success.
Ensure all of Imogen's components are released and deployable into a diverse set of customer environments, meeting the needs of enterprise customers (quality, software supply chain audits, and more).
Turn infrastructure into a first-class product capability: opinionated where possible, flexible where necessary, and aligned with Mechanical Orchard’s modernization strategy and GTM motion.
Own the end-to-end infrastructure product vision, including installers, deployment tooling, reference architectures, and operational patterns.
Define and evolve a cohesive infrastructure roadmap aligned with Platform architecture, customer needs, and GTM strategy.
Partner closely with Product Leadership to balance near-term customer needs with long-term platform scalability and repeatability.
Establish infrastructure as a product with clear value propositions, constraints, supported configurations, and lifecycle expectations.
Drive standardization where possible while enabling extensibility for complex enterprise environments
Define platform architecture and roadmap decisions to ensure deployability, operability, and customer-environment compatibility are first-class concerns.
Ensure infrastructure requirements are surfaced early in platform design discussions.
Champion architectural patterns that reduce installation complexity, operational burden, and long-term support cost.
Partner with Security and Compliance to ensure infrastructure designs meet enterprise and regulatory expectations.
Partner with Infra Delivery Leadership to define installation and deployment strategy across customer and Mechanical Orchard environments.
Ensure installation processes are repeatable, measurable, and continuously improving, leveraging the latest advancements in AI to support execution
Build Mechanical Orchard’s system for reliable software releases, by defining standards, providing tools, and establishing clear boundaries between the release engineering team and platform product teams.
Define and refine success metrics for infrastructure delivery into customer environments (e.g., time-to-install, failure rates, support load).
Ensure feedback from real-world deployments is systematically incorporated into infrastructure product evolution.
Partner with Sales, Infra Delivery Leadership, and Product to ensure infrastructure capabilities are accurately represented in pre-sales and GTM motions.
Partner with Infra Delivery Leadership to define and maintain sales-enablement assets (reference architectures, deployment options, constraints, and expectations).
Serve as a senior technical partner during complex or high-risk sales pursuits.
Ensure infrastructure offerings align with pricing, packaging, and customer expectations.
Help shape GTM strategy around standard vs. custom infrastructure deployments.
10+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, or developer tooling.
Proven track record building infrastructure as a product, incl. deep expertise with deployments in complex enterprise environments (cloud, hybrid, regulated).
Strong architectural instincts paired with pragmatic delivery experience.
Hands-on experience with latest AI coding tools, model capabilities, and industry trends
Demonstrated ability to operate cross-functionally across Product Engineering, Product, Forward-deployed Engineering Teams, Sales, and Security.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, particularly around architecture, strategy, and executive alignment.
The ability to navigate ambiguity and deliver high-quality product experiences on tight timelines and in line with our business aspirations.
A bias for action - you’re not afraid to roll up your sleeves, to talk to a customer or to figure out a new way to use AI tools to your advantage.