Senior Director, Engineering

About Us

Sophos is a cybersecurity leader defending 600,000 organizations globally with an AI-driven platform and expert-led services. Sophos meets organizations wherever they are in their security maturity and grows with them to defeat cyberattacks. Its solutions combine machine learning, automation, and real-time threat intelligence with frontline human expertise from Sophos X-Ops to deliver advanced, 24/7 threat monitoring, detection, and response.

Sophos offers industry-leading managed detection and response (MDR) alongside a comprehensive portfolio of cybersecurity technologies — including endpoint, network, email, and cloud security, extended detection and response (XDR), identity threat detection and response (ITDR), and next-gen SIEM. Together with expert advisory services, these capabilities help organizations proactively reduce risk and respond faster, with the visibility and scalability needed to stay ahead of evolving threats.

Sophos goes to market with a global partner ecosystem, including Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), resellers and distributors, marketplace integrations, and cyber risk partners, giving organizations the flexibility to choose trusted relationships when securing their business. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K. More information is available at www.sophos.com.

Role Summary

We are seeking a Sr. Director of Engineering to lead our X-Ops Platform organization. The leader will be responsible for all aspects of the platform ranging from vision, strategy and roadmap to product delivery and service execution.  The leader will coordinate with stakeholders to align business priorities and support engineering teams in delivering secure, high-quality software at scale using modern AI technologies.

You will set strategy and standards for how we build, run, and improve our platforms and operational tooling across the engineering lifecycle - partnering closely with Product, Security, IT, and Engineering leaders. Success in this role looks like improved developer productivity, strong service reliability and resilience, clear operational governance, and efficiency in cloud and platform spend and close alignment with Sophos X-Ops goals.

You bring enough technical depth to challenge and support senior engineers and architects, while spending most of your time enabling teams, aligning stakeholders, and ensuring execution against clear outcomes. You will have a strong grounding in Cyber Security, Cloud Computing and AI frameworks and development practices.

You will lead and grow multiple teams and managers, fostering strong engineering practices and a culture of ownership. You will collaborate with senior stakeholders across Engineering, Product, Security, IT, and Finance to ensure platform roadmaps and operational priorities support company goals.

This role is based in Abingdon UK with remote working and teams also in India and Hungary. Periodic in-person leadership and team collaboration and travel are needed.

What You Will Do

• Set the vision, strategy, and operating model for the X-Ops Platform organisation (e.g., Delivery Roadmap, AI First Developer Experience, CI/CD, Observability, SRE, Cloud & Infrastructure Enablement)
• Lead, coach, and develop engineering leaders (directors, managers and senior ICs), building high-performing teams with clear ownership and strong engineering culture
• Own platform reliability, resilience, and operational excellence: incident management, on-call standards, SLIs/SLOs, post-incident learning, and continuous improvement
• Partner with product engineering and threat research leaders to improve productivity and delivery throughput across the software and service lifecycle
• Drive cloud efficiency and cost transparency (FinOps): budgeting, forecasting, unit economics, and optimisation initiatives in partnership with Finance and Engineering
• Establish platform governance and standards (architecture, security, compliance, data handling, vendor/tooling choices) while enabling appropriate team autonomy
• Build strong cross-functional alignment peer X-Ops leaders, and other operational stakeholders to ensure aligned feature delivery and service operations.
• Actively drive responsible AI adoption within the organisation:
• • Establish guidance, guardrails, and enablement for approved AI tools and workflows
  • Measure impact and promote best practices that improve quality, speed, and operational effectiveness while protecting sensitive data
  • Define and track meaningful metrics and outcomes; communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to executive stakeholders

What You Will Bring

• Cyber Security background and acumen
• Significant engineering leadership experience, including leading leaders and scaling teams in a platform, infrastructure, SRE, DevOps, or operations-focused environment
• Strong track record of building reliable, secure platforms and improving developer productivity through pragmatic, outcome-driven investment
• Experience establishing operational excellence practices (incident response, on-call, observability, SLOs, post-incident learning) and driving continuous improvement
• Ability to set strategy and translate it into execution via roadmaps, prioritisation, and clear measures of success
• Strong stakeholder management and executive communication skills, with the ability to align across Engineering, Product, Security, IT, and Finance
• Commercial and financial acumen, including experience with cloud cost management, budgeting, and performance metrics
• Commitment to responsible AI adoption—setting guardrails, enabling teams, and demonstrating measurable improvements in productivity and quality

Desirable skills

• Experience building and operating platforms at scale in a SaaS environment, ideally with multi-region cloud deployment
• Familiarity with modern CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, containerisation, and observability tooling
• Strong security and compliance mindset; experience partnering with security teams to embed controls into platform capabilities
• Experience with organisational design, operating cadence, and change management in a complex engineering organisation
• Exposure to FinOps practices and tooling, including unit cost models and cost allocation/chargeback approaches
• Comfort working with technical teams and/or technical concepts
• Experience improving processes, introducing new ways of working, or leading small change initiatives
• Experience with AI-assisted productivity or development tools in a professional setting

#li-remote

#b2

#li-FC2

Ready to Join Us?

At Sophos, we believe in the power of diverse perspectives to fuel innovation. Research shows that candidates sometimes hesitate to apply if they don't check every box in a job description. We challenge that notion. Your unique experiences and skills might be exactly what we need to enhance our team. Don't let a checklist hold you back – we encourage you to apply.

What's Great About Sophos?

·   Sophos operates a remote-first working model, making remote work the primary option for most employees. However, some roles may necessitate a hybrid approach. While we are a remote first organization, applicants must have legal authorization to work in the jurisdiction where the position is posted, without requiring employer sponsorship.

·   Our people – we innovate and create, all of which are accompanied by a great sense of fun and team spirit

·   Employee-led diversity and inclusion networks that build community and provide education and advocacy

·   Annual charity and fundraising initiatives and volunteer days for employees to support local communities

·   Global employee sustainability initiatives to reduce our environmental footprint

·   Global fitness and trivia competitions to keep our bodies and minds sharp

·   Global wellbeing days for employees to relax and recharge 

·   Monthly wellbeing webinars and training to support employee health and wellbeing

Our Commitment To You

We’re proud of the diverse and inclusive environment we have at Sophos, and we’re committed to ensuring equality of opportunity.   We believe that diversity, combined with excellence, builds a better Sophos, so we encourage applicants who can contribute to the diversity of our team.  All applicants will be treated in a fair and equal manner and in accordance with the law regardless of gender, sex, gender reassignment, marital status, race, religion or belief, color, age, military veteran status, disability, pregnancy, maternity or sexual orientation.  We want to give you every opportunity to show us your best self, so if there are any adjustments we could make to the recruitment and selection process to support you, please let us know. 

Data Protection

If you choose to explore an opportunity, and subsequently share your CV or other personal details with Sophos, these details will be held by Sophos for 12 months in accordance with our Privacy Policy and used by our recruitment team to contact you regarding this or other relevant opportunities at Sophos.  If you would like Sophos to delete or update your details at any time, please follow the steps set out in the Privacy Policy describing your individual rights.  For more information on Sophos’ data protection practices, please consult our Privacy Policy Cybersecurity as a Service Delivered | Sophos