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We are looking for a bold, strategic, and technically exceptional Director of Engineering to own the strategy and evolution of Levi's API and event streaming platforms, establishing the self-service foundation that empowers squads to own their connectivity outcomes, and driving the platform capabilities that will determine how effectively we operate AI at scale. Reporting to the Senior Director, Platform Engineering & Shared Services, this role is defined by two cornerstones: driving an enterprise-level transformation toward a squad-led enablement model, and pioneering the next generation of platform capabilities for our AI-driven future.
About the Job
We are looking for a platform engineering leader who thinks in products, leads through influence, and is energized by both organizational transformation and technical innovation:
- Lead the transition from a centralized model to a squad-led enablement model. Build the base platforms, patterns, and self-service tooling squads need to own their API and event streaming outcomes. Up-skill teams on API-first and event-driven practices, define clear accountability frameworks, and provide the change management leadership that makes distributed ownership feel supported rather than abandoned.
- Develop and deliver the enabling team's core services: setting API-first and event-driven design standards; building a developer portal and patterns library that makes it easy for squads to build to those standards without needing to ask for help; providing internal consulting and subject-matter expertise, including on domain-driven design; and owning governance covering API lifecycle management, schema management, security, and AI traffic governance.
- Lead the API Solutions & Gateway and Event Streaming squads, establishing a best-in-class and continuously evolving portfolio of API and event streaming capabilities. Drive the roadmap from the current stack toward cloud-native platforms across a primarily GCP, multi-cloud environment, delivering capabilities that serve both operational and AI/ML workloads.
- Position the organization's API and event streaming platforms as foundational AI infrastructure — and pioneer the new capabilities that make AI at scale possible. Own the strategy and roadmap for an LLM Gateway governing multi-vendor model access, MCP and A2A gateway capabilities enabling agentic architectures, and the event streaming layer providing the real-time data signals AI systems depend on.
- Champion agentic readiness — designing API contracts and event schemas for AI agent consumption, enabling multi-agent orchestration patterns, and driving self-healing platform capabilities — while leading DevSecOps best practices including automated testing and zero trust security.
- Team Leadership — Inspire and lead teams, cultivating high-trust partnerships across Engineering, Product, Technical Product, Program and Commercial teams. Foster an inclusive, collaborative culture as a leader of people.
About You
- Engineering leader with 10+ years' experience including 5 years of people management, with a track record of building platform capabilities at scale and leading organizational transformation or operating model changes with significant impacts to architecture.
- Deep expertise in enterprise API management and event streaming concepts and patterns — including REST, OpenAPI, GraphQL, and gRPC — with hands-on experience across platforms such as Mulesoft, Confluent Kafka, Apigee, or Cloud Pub/Sub.
- Experience designing cloud-native API and event streaming architectures across GCP and/or Azure environments, with the ability to navigate multi-cloud realities, make platform-appropriate tooling decisions, and integrate with cloud data and AI services (e.g. BigQuery, Vertex AI, Azure OpenAI).
- Demonstrated experience in how API and event streaming platforms enable AI strategy — including LLM gateway architecture, AI-native API patterns (streaming, async, function calling), multi-vendor AI governance through API infrastructure, and agentic patterns including tool-calling APIs and event-driven agent triggers.
- Proven track record of building and evolving platform capabilities, with experience leading change management and accountability model transitions within engineering organizations.
- Use data and metrics to interpret monitoring, derive recommendations, and drive actions.
- Comprehensive understanding of Agile and DevOps principles, including DevSecOps and zero-trust security models.
The expected starting salary range for this role is $148,600 - $245,400 per year. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range based on the location of the role. The amount a particular employee will earn within the salary range will be based on factors such as relevant education, qualifications, performance and business needs.
Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) offers a total rewards package that includes base pay, incentive plans, 401(k) matching, paid leave, health insurance, product discounts, and more designed to help you and your family stay healthy, meet your financial goals, and balance the demands of your work and personal life. Available benefits and incentive compensation vary depending upon the specifics of the role; details relating to a specific role will be made available upon request. Read more about our benefits here.
LS&Co. is an affirmative action and equal employment opportunity employer. We welcome and value people from diverse cultures, backgrounds, and experiences to make LS&Co. a collective success.
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