---
title: 'Sr. Engineering Manager at Upbound - Job Posting'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-engineering-manager-upbound-job-posting-san-francisco-california-077xknhnpwse'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-15'
---

# Sr. Engineering Manager at Upbound - Job Posting

- **Company:** Upbound - Job Posting
- **Location:** San Francisco California, United States
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-09-14
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-15
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/upboundext/jobs/6188467004

## Job description

Upbound is redefining how modern infrastructure is built for the Agentic AI Era. We’re the creators and primary maintainers of Crossplane, and we’re building the Intelligent Control Plane—a new platform layer that makes infrastructure programmable, autonomous, and composable.

Our mission is to power the AI-native enterprise with a foundational platform layer that helps teams provision, operate, and adapt infrastructure at scale—so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents. We partner with leading cloud providers, ISVs, and open-source communities to help organizations move faster with greater confidence.

Today, Upbound supports Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across 100+ countries. Crossplane has surpassed 100M+ downloads and is used by 1,000+ teams worldwide. We’re a Series B company backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, and we’ve raised $69M to date. Learn more at [upbound.io](http://upbound.io/).

Upbound is building the control plane for the modern enterprise. As the company behind Crossplane, the open-source CNCF project that extends Kubernetes into an AI-native cloud control plane. Upbound enables organizations to compose, manage, and operate infrastructure and services through declarative, programmable control planes. Upbound Cloud delivers hosted, multi-tenant control planes that power platform engineering teams at scale. Our vision extends beyond infrastructure management into an AI-native Control Fabric — where control planes become programmable, extensible, and ecosystem-driven. As we scale into the next phase of growth, we are hiring a Director to lead our Control Planes & Ecosystem Group.

As Director of Control Planes & Ecosystem, you will own the strategy and execution for the customer-facing control plane experience across:

- Crossplane: Upstream work and contributions for the open source Crossplane Project
- Upbound Crossplane: Upbound’s Enterprise Distribution of Crossplane
- Upbound Marketplace: The place where Users and Customers discover content
- Upbound Official Providers and Extensions: Development and maintenance of Providers, Add-Ons, Functions, and more
- Partner Integrations: Development of Extensions with third party partners

This is a senior leadership role responsible for scaling teams, defining long-term architecture strategy, and shaping how enterprises adopt programmable control planes through a thriving ecosystem. You will lead multiple managers and high-performing engineering teams, driving cohesion across product and user experiences.

In this role, you will…

Control Plane & Enterprise Strategy

- Help define and drive the long-term vision for hosted control planes and ecosystem extensibility.
- Ensure Marketplace, UXP, APIs, and Extensions operate as a cohesive control plane experience.
- Shape how platform engineering teams compose infrastructure through Crossplane-powered abstractions.
- Drive reliability, scalability, and production-grade control planes at scale.

Ecosystem Leadership

- Own the strategy for Upbound Marketplace as the distribution layer for Crossplane providers, extensions, and control plane building blocks.
- Grow and strengthen the provider ecosystem (ISVs, cloud providers, platform partners).
- Enable extension frameworks that allow customers and partners to build on top of Upbound control planes.
- Ensure ecosystem experiences are intuitive, secure, and enterprise-ready.

Organizational Leadership

- Lead managers and managers-of-managers across multiple teams.
- Scale engineering org structure to support product velocity and ecosystem expansion.
- Establish operational rigor: roadmap planning, delivery predictability, uptime SLAs, and production excellence.
- Foster a culture of ownership, innovation, and deep technical craftsmanship.

Cross-Functional Influence

- Partner closely with Product, GTM, Alliances, and Customer Success to align ecosystem strategy with revenue goals.
- Translate enterprise customer needs into scalable control plane capabilities.
- Represent engineering in executive-level conversations around ecosystem expansion and AI-native infrastructure.

You are a good fit if you have…

- 10+ years of engineering leadership experience, including leading managers of managers.
- 5+ years building or scaling cloud-native, infrastructure, or platform engineering products.
- Deep familiarity with Kubernetes and the Cloud Native ecosystem.
- Experience building SaaS control planes or distributed systems at scale.
- Strong understanding of APIs, SDKs, declarative systems, and extensibility frameworks.
- Proven experience growing ecosystem-driven products (marketplaces, providers, plugins, or integrations).
- Track record of delivering reliable production services with strong uptime and performance standards.
- Ability to operate strategically while diving deep technically.

It is a plus if…

- Experience with Crossplane and/or Kubernetes.
- Background in platform engineering or internal developer platforms.
- Experience building multi-tenant control plane architectures.
- Startup experience in high-growth infrastructure companies.
- Passion for programmable infrastructure and AI-native systems.

## #LI-REMOTE

Why Upbound?

At Upbound, you’ll help shape the systems and strategies that drive predictable, scalable growth in a product-led company embracing usage-based models. If you're excited to build from the ground up, work with cutting-edge cloud technologies, and directly impact how revenue is generated and scaled—this is your seat at the table.

## About Upbound

Upbound is pioneering infrastructure platforms for the Agentic AI Era, serving Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across more than 100 countries. The company empowers infrastructure and platform teams with Intelligent Control Planes - based on Kubernetes and Crossplane - that provision, operate, and adapt so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents. Upbound is the creator and primary maintainer of Crossplane, the popular open-source framework for building cloud-native control planes, with over 100 million downloads and adoption by more than 1,000 teams worldwide. A Series B startup backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, Upbound has raised $69M to date. For more information, visit [www.upbound.io](http://www.upbound.io/).

## About Upbound - Job Posting

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Upbound provides an intelligent control plane platform, based on Kubernetes and the open-source Crossplane project, to help enterprises build and manage infrastructure at scale in the AI era.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: Not publicly available (company behind the open-source Crossplane project, which was open-sourced in 2018)
- **Founders**: Bassam Tabbara (CEO) and co-creators of Crossplane

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Cloud infrastructure, DevOps, platform engineering
- **Target customers**: B2B – enterprise infrastructure and platform teams, Fortune 500 companies, cloud providers, ISVs
- **Mission or purpose**: Enable organizations to build infrastructure platforms at the speed of AI, safely and with trust – transforming infrastructure from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage.

## Products & Services
- **[Upbound Intelligent Control Plane]**: A SaaS platform built on Crossplane that provisions, operates, and adapts infrastructure across clouds. It is designed for both human operators and AI agents, enabling AI-native operations.
- **[Crossplane (Open Source)]**: A CNCF-graduated, Kubernetes-native control plane framework that allows teams to compose infrastructure as custom APIs. Upbound is the primary maintainer and creator of Crossplane.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – $69M (Series B)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: GV (Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, Intel Capital
- **Growth Signals**: Crossplane has surpassed 100 million downloads, is used by 1,000+ teams worldwide, has 10,000+ GitHub stars, 100,000+ contributions, and a 13,000+ member Slack community. The project is a CNCF graduated project.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Creator of Crossplane**: Upbound is the original creator and primary maintainer of Crossplane, giving them deep expertise and influence over the open-source ecosystem.
- **CNCF Graduated Project**: Crossplane’s graduation status provides enterprise trust and a strong community foundation.
- **Intelligent Control Plane for AI Era**: Upbound’s platform is purpose-built to support both human operators and AI agents, positioning it as a key layer in AI-native infrastructure.

## Strategic Focus
- Current priorities include expanding the intelligent control plane to enable autonomous infrastructure operations, deepening partnerships with leading cloud providers, and scaling the platform to support the growing demand for AI-native enterprise infrastructure.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote-First**: Upbound is a remote-first company with team members across North America and Europe.
- **Flexible Hours and PTO**: Flexible paid vacation plus 10+ observed bank holidays by country.
- **Benefits**: US-based healthcare (HSA, FSA, PPO, HMO – 100% premium covered for the employee), 401(k) plan, stock option equity grants, home office stipend (desk, chair, internet).
- **Culture**: Seven core values: Be Accountable, Collaborate Decisively, Demonstrate Craftsmanship, Care For Our Communities, Champion The Customer, Act as an Owner, Engage Vulnerability. Emphasis on open source, innovation, and a safe environment for learning.
- **Engineering Culture**: Building the next generation of infrastructure platforms using Kubernetes, Crossplane, and Go. High autonomy and ownership.

## Sources
1. [upbound.io/careers](https://www.upbound.io/careers)
2. [upbound.io](https://www.upbound.io/)
3. [upbound.io/about-us](https://www.upbound.io/about-us)
4. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/upboundext](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/upboundext)
5. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/upbound](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/upbound)

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