---
title: 'Director of Platform Engineering at First Due'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-platform-engineering-first-due-united-states-wmjsjwgpbey8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Director of Platform Engineering at First Due

- **Company:** First Due
- **Location:** United States
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-08-14
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/localitymediallcdbafirstdue/jobs/4370009009

## Job description

## About First Due

First Due’s mission is to prevent first responder injury or death by providing fire and EMS agencies with transformative, end-to-end software solutions that empower them to run safer, smarter, and more effective operations.

Job Title: Director of Platform Engineering

Location: Remote - US Only Country: United States Department: Engineering Reports To: SVP, Engineering Position Type: Full-Time Salary: $240,000

Job Summary:

This is a new, dedicated leadership role reporting to the SVP of Engineering, accountable for turning First Due's DevOps, SRE, database reliability, incident-management, and developer-experience practices from distributed and ad hoc into centralized and disciplined. The right leader brings genuine hands-on technical depth to build and run this function, and the executive presence to represent platform reliability and operational maturity to the ELT.

Key Responsibilities:

DevOps & CI/CD

- Assesses and centralizes CI/CD and deployment practices across product lines; owns the rollout
- Directly contributes where useful — e.g., containerizing and automating deployments, not just directing others
- Improves deployment frequency, predictability, environment consistency, and release safety

Site Reliability Engineering & Observability

- Stands up SLOs/SLIs, error budgets, and production reliability standards
- Owns monitoring, alerting, and observability patterns/dashboards, standardized across teams
- Partners with development teams on consistent instrumentation rather than owning their code

Incident Management & Operational Discipline

- Owns on-call tooling, rotation design, and escalation policy company-wide, partnering with Support, Product, QA, and Development to ensure comprehensive escalation resolutions
- Defines and enforces RCA and post-incident review discipline, using AI to speed investigation and information-gathering
- Builds these as adopted practices across teams that don't report to this role — requires real influence without authority

Database Reliability Engineering (DBRE)

- Owns operational reliability of First Due's core production database(s): uptime, query performance, capacity
- Defines schema-change practice and review discipline for a monolithic, high-traffic database
- Partners with Infrastructure on backup, continuity, and BCDR runbooks, and is accountable for testing them

Engineering Operations & Metrics

- Defines and implements the operational metrics set (deployment frequency, MTTR, system health, uptime), distinct from delivery/velocity metrics
- Builds the dashboards and reporting giving engineering and executive leadership real visibility into system health
- Formalizes the AI natural-language query layer already in use against observability data into a shared standard for "how we observe system health"

Developer Experience & Shared Frontend Platform

- Partners with the owner of shared component libraries, frontend build tooling, and design-system/API contracts used by product teams — not feature UI work
- Sponsors (without managing) a dotted-line Frontend Guild that drives convention adoption across module teams

Cross-Team Architecture Influence

- Looks across product groups to spot shared structural patterns and drift — e.g., business logic embedded in frontend code that belongs in per-module backend APIs — and drives the fix
- Influences cross-cutting platform architecture; does not own product/feature architecture or act as a Chief Architect

## Team Building

- Builds this function's structure and hiring plan from the ground up, making the business case for each hire as the need is proven — headcount is not prescribed in advance
- Establishes the team's operating rhythm (on-call, incident reviews, roadmap planning)

Qualifications:

- CI/CD and deployment-pipeline modernization at scale
- Formal SRE practice: SLOs, observability/alerting tooling, incident management
- On-call/incident-management program design (e.g., PagerDuty or equivalent) and RCA practice enforcement
- Database reliability/operations experience (schema governance, query optimization, backup/BCDR) for a high-traffic production database, or has directly managed someone who does
- Vertical SaaS, regulated, or mission-critical software is a plus; public safety experience is an advantage
- Executive presence: can talk to the ELT about reliability, risk, and operational maturity in business terms
- Genuinely hands-on — willing to be in the pipeline, the dashboard, or the incident channel

For US-based Roles All applicants must be authorized to work for any US employer in the United States. Locality Media LLC is unable to sponsor or transition sponsorship ownership of employment visas at this time. Hiring is contingent upon candidates successfully passing a criminal background check. As part of the I-9 verification of authorization to work in the US, Locality Media participates in E-Verify.

Physical Demands and Work Environment This role is fully remote with minimal travel expectations at this time. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable qualified employees and applicants to perform the essential functions as outlined above. If you require an accommodation during the interview process, please reach out to people@firstdue.com.

Working at First Due First Due offers a comprehensive compensation and benefits package for eligible employees, including competitive pay, medical, dental, and vision coverage, FSA/HSA, 401(k), flexible PTO, a fully remote workplace, a technology stipend, opportunities for advancement, and other benefits and perks that sets our team apart. Visit [www.firstdue.com](http://www.firstdue.com/) to learn more.

If you are a resident of a state requiring wage transparency, please reach out to people@firstdue.com for a reasonable estimate of annual base compensation and any eligible incentive compensation. The actual compensation offered to successful candidates for roles may be higher or lower, based on non-discriminatory criteria including but not limited to relevant professional experience, geographic location, knowledge, skills, and abilities. This range will be reviewed on a regular basis.

First Due is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in any aspect of employment on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status, or any other protected status or class. We are committed to promoting an environment of respect, acceptance, diversity and inclusivity, and equal opportunity. Discrimination and harassment of any type in any form will not be tolerated.

When you apply for a role at Locality Media, LLC d/b/a First Due, we collect personal information such as identifiers (e.g., name, email, phone number), professional and employment information, education information, and information you provide in your application materials. We use this information to evaluate your candidacy, communicate with you, and manage our recruiting process. We may share this information with our service providers who assist with recruiting and background screening. We do not sell or share applicant personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. We retain applicant information in accordance with our data retention policies. California residents have rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the CPRA. For more information, please review our Candidate Privacy [here](https://www.firstdue.com/first-due-applicant-privacy-policy).

## About First Due

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: First Due provides the only end-to-end, cloud-based software platform built specifically for Fire & EMS agencies to manage their entire operation—from response and reporting to prevention and personnel.
- **Entity Type**: Private (venture-backed; raised $356.8M total funding across multiple rounds)
- **Headquarters**: Garden City, New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2016
- **Founders**: Ed Stempinski (Founder/Inventor)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Public safety technology (GovTech) for fire departments and emergency medical services (EMS)
- Target customers: B2G – fire and EMS agencies of all sizes, from small volunteer departments to large metropolitan cities (e.g., El Paso, New Orleans, Seattle, Vancouver)
- Mission statement: “Prevent first responder injury or death by providing fire and EMS agencies with transformative, end-to-end software solutions that empower them to run safer, smarter, and more effective operations.”

## Products & Services
All offerings are cloud-based SaaS modules accessible via a single login. Key products include:

- **ePCR**: Electronic Patient Care Reporting for EMS.
- **Fire Prevention**: Inspection, code enforcement, and plan review management.
- **Scheduling & Personnel**: Shift scheduling, time tracking, and staff management.
- **Assets & Inventory**: Tracking of equipment, apparatus, and supplies.
- **Hydrants**: Hydrant inspection and maintenance records.
- **Training**: Course management, certifications, and drill tracking.
- **Community Connect**: Public-facing portal for community engagement and pre-incident info.
- **Mobile Responder**: Mobile app for field access to all modules.
- **Incident Command**: Real-time incident management and accountability.
- **Pre-Incident Planning**: Digital pre-plans for commercial and high-risk buildings.
- **Data & Analytics**: Advanced reporting and dashboards for operational insights.
- **ITM**: Inspection, Testing, and Maintenance for fire protection systems.
- **Fire Investigations**: Case management for fire origin and cause investigations.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue of $3.7M (LinkedIn estimate); Total Funding of $356.8M (LinkedIn)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: New York Angels (lead in seed rounds), other angel groups; partners include government agencies and integration with NERIS.
- **Growth Signals**:
  - 385 employees (40.3% YoY growth, +143 people)
  - 2,800+ agencies using the platform, 300,000+ users, 4M+ incident reports/year
  - Recognized as GovTech 100 honoree (2025), Fast Company’s Next Big Thing in Tech (2024), #1 Fire & EMS Software Company (2022–2024), SOC 2 Type 2 compliant
  - Operating in 19 countries (US, India, Spain, Uruguay, Canada, Brazil, etc.)
  - Acquired Data Chief in 2019

## Competitive Advantages
- **Single, unified platform**: Only vendor offering a complete end-to-end suite for fire/EMS, eliminating the need for multiple disconnected systems.
- **Cloud-native and in-house built**: All development done internally, ensuring seamless integration, rapid innovation, and effortless maintenance.
- **Aggressive innovation cycle**: Continuously releases new features and modules (e.g., AI-powered workflows).
- **Trusted by large cities**: Deployed in major metros like El Paso, New Orleans, Seattle, and Vancouver, proving scalability.
- **SOC 2 Type 2 compliant**: Meets rigorous security and data protection standards.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI-powered enhancements**: Integrating artificial intelligence into RMS workflows to improve efficiency and decision-making.
- **Global expansion**: Continuing to grow across North America and into new international markets.
- **Holistic product development**: Deepening integration between all modules and expanding into adjacent areas (e.g., health & wellness, community engagement).
- **Client success partnerships**: Emphasizing customer success and support to retain agencies and drive referrals.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven culture**: Directly contributes to preventing first responder injury and death—work has tangible, life-saving impact.
- **Remote-first**: All listed jobs are remote within the US (“Remote - US Only”), offering flexibility.
- **High growth**: 40%+ headcount growth signals opportunity for career advancement and impact.
- **Global team**: Colleagues across India, Europe, Latin America, and North America; strong engineering hub in Hyderabad.
- **Recognition & perks**: Award-winning company (GovTech 100, Fast Company), with benefits including health insurance, flexible working hours, job training, soft skill training, and employee-friendly policies.
- **Engineering culture**: In-house development, modern cloud stack, and a focus on continuous improvement and innovation.

## Sources
1. [firstdue.com](https://www.firstdue.com/)
2. [firstdue.com/about](https://www.firstdue.com/about)
3. [linkedin.com/company/firstdue](https://www.linkedin.com/company/firstdue)
4. [ambitionbox.com](https://www.ambitionbox.com/overview/first-due-overview)
5. [job-boards.greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/localitymediallcdbafirstdue)

## Other roles at First Due

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