Director of Platform Engineering

About Checkr Checkr is building the data platform to power safe and fair decisions. Established in 2014, Checkr’s innovative technology and robust data platform help customers assess risk and ensure safety and compliance to build trusted workplaces and communities. Checkr has over 100,000 customers including DoorDash, Coinbase, Lyft, Instacart, and Airtable. We’re a team that thrives on solving complex problems with innovative solutions that advance our mission. Checkr is recognized on Forbes Cloud 100 2025 List and is a Y Combinator 2024 Breakthrough Company . About the role As the Director of Platform Engineering at Checkr, you will be responsible for driving the organization's overall platform and infrastructure strategy. To achieve this, you will need to have a deep understanding of platform engineering and how to drive a strategic roadmap of foundational capabilities and, most importantly, its adoption by the other development teams. What you’ll do Define and drive the technical vision, architecture, and service ecosystem for a highly scalable, reliable, and secure platform that enables reuse and standardization across engineering teams. Lead execution and delivery across platform engineering, scaling systems, and processes to improve operational efficiency, cost optimization, and alignment with business impact. Partner cross-functionally with product engineering leadership to drive customer-centric platform solutions and foster strong cross-team collaboration. Build and scale a high-performing, inclusive engineering team, fostering a culture of ownership, innovation, transparency, and continuous improvement. Lead the strategy and adoption of AI-enabled development practices, including tooling, workflows, and guardrails, to improve engineering velocity, code quality, and developer experience. What you bring Demonstrated success as a Director+ level in leading, scaling, and retaining a high-performing engineering org of 30-40+ engineers 7-10 years of leadership experience leading infrastructure or delivery platform engineering initiatives. 15+ years of software engineering experience Data-driven mindset: you know everything built must be measured to understand impact; fluency with DORA metrics and engineering health indicators to assess and improve delivery performance Experience leading Platform teams, ideally, most of these teams: Infrastructure Data Stores, DevX, SRE, and Core Services. Experience with driving successful platform adoption programs, with the ability to demonstrate the business impact of such initiatives Proven experience driving AI adoption across engineering teams to meaningfully increase developer productivity and operational efficiency. Highly effective communicator with good people instincts - able to build trust and work well with a diverse group, both internally and externally Willingness to lead in a hands-on, high-performance environment An A-player mindset with a strong bias for action: you raise the bar, move with urgency, stay resilient through ambiguity, and take ownership to deliver meaningful outcomes What you’ll get A fast-paced and collaborative environment Learning and development allowance Competitive compensation and opportunity for advancement 100% medical, dental, and vision coverage Up to $25K reimbursement for fertility, adoption, and parental planning services Flexible PTO policy Monthly wellness stipend Pay Transparency Disclosure One of Checkr’s core values is Transparency. To live by that value, we’ve made the decision to disclose salary ranges in all of our job postings. We use geographic cost of labor as an input to develop ranges for our roles and as such, each location where we hire may have a different range. If this role is remote, we have listed the top to the bottom of the possible range, but we will specify the target range for an exact location when you are selected for a recruiting discussion. For more information on our compensation ... (truncated, view full listing at source)