Senior Director, Engineering- X-Ops Platform

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.

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.

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

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