Product Director, Platform

Your Dream. Our Team. About Rise8 Rise8 builds custom, secure software for government organizations, measuring success by impact: lives saved, time returned, and missions advanced. We think big, start small, and scale fast with elite teams across product, design, and engineering to drive continuous delivery for critical missions. We believe customer experience starts with employee experience, so we take care of our employees. Rise8 is where you’ll do the best work of your career—supported by a culture you won’t find anywhere else. We offer competitive pay and benefits, but what sets us apart is our commitment to autonomy, growth, and a culture rooted in kindness, candor, and continuous learning. Certified as a Great Place to Work® , with 100% of employees saying they love working here, Rise8 is where bold ideas become real capabilities. Where mission meets meaning. And where fewer bad things happen because of bad software. About You You want to make tomorrow better than today. You have strong opinions about platform design and the discipline to hold them. You believe the best developer experience comes from making hard choices, not offering infinite flexibility. You are a creative problem solver who is comfortable with uncertainty. You've built or operated platforms where the goal was to abstract complexity away from delivery teams You have a passion for high-speed security and you care about risk management over compliance. You believe the biggest vulnerability in any system is time. You live to securely reduce cycle time. You enjoy daily decision making and real product delivery. You help ensure project success and client satisfaction. You enjoy collaborative teams, pairing with team members, and inviting your clients to participate. You like to work alongside, and learn from, lean and agile leaders. You're a curious and keen learner who thrives on enhancing your (and our) practices and knowledge. As a Product Director, Platform at Rise8, you will: Lead the full rollout and continuous evolution of the Mission OS Platform, serving as the senior product owner responsible for strategy, architecture, and execution across the entire platform portfolio. Lead and manage the Mission OS Core team — owning the culture and performance of the platform team while maintaining direct accountability to product outcomes. Own and evolve Rise8's InnerSource model — the governance framework by which delivery teams across active client engagements contribute back to the Mission OS Core platform. This includes contribution standards, merge governance, and building the internal community practice that makes cross-team contribution sustainable Drive an opinionated platform strategy — make and hold architectural decisions that keep Mission OS Core focused, maintainable, and deployable across Rise8 engagements without fragmentation. Define and drive the platform services roadmap, including onboarding frameworks for new tenants and integration patterns that bring multiple products into a convergent, operable baseline. Serve as the connective tissue between technical execution and mission impact, translating complex DevSecOps, platform engineering, and digital transformation concepts into compelling, actionable product experiences. Partner with open source software (OSS) communities and contributors to shape tooling, content distribution, and platform integrations that amplify Mission OS's reach and impact. Own and evolve the platform architecture and product vision in collaboration with Rise8 leadership, engineering teams, content creators, marketing partners, and government stakeholders. Drive continuous delivery of Mission OS platform products — applying lean product methodologies to optimize each release cycle and measure outcomes in production. This is a builder's seat. The Product Director, Platform owns Mission OS Core end-to-end — the architecture, the team, the InnerSource model, the call on what gets in and what doesn't. If you're a technical founder who's built and run a platform, made the hard tradeoffs, and held the line on opinionated design then this role will feel familiar. The autonomy is real. The decisions are yours to make and defend. If you've shipped your own thing, whether it landed or didn't, you'll recognize this work. Qualifications 10+ years of experience spanning product management, platform engineering, technical program management, software engineering, or as a technical founder/platform operator , with a demonstrated track record of delivering outcomes at scale in complex environments. Deep technical fluency - you can lead architecture discussions, evaluate platform and tooling tradeoffs, understand CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps practices, and drive technical decisions without needing translation. Hands-on experience with open source software (OSS) - whether as a contributor, maintainer, community participant, or product leader who has built or shipped OSS-backed products or managed an InnerSource portfolio. Demonstrated experience designing and scaling platform services, including tenant onboarding, service integration, and convergent baseline architecture across multiple products or teams. Proven ability to develop and own architecture and roadmap strategies that span multiple products, teams, and stakeholder groups. Proven ability to lead and mentor balanced, cross-functional teams across product, design, and engineering disciplines. Exceptional communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to distill technical complexity into clear narratives for both technical and non-technical audiences. Strong facilitation skills for leading workshops, discovery sessions, and cross-functional alignment activities. A deep passion for continuous skill development and a desire to tackle intriguing challenges and complex problems. Ability to obtain a security clearance for US Government work. U.S. citizenship required. Preferred Qualifications Experience working within or alongside the Department of Defense, federal agencies, or large regulated enterprises. Experience building or operating highly opinionated developer platforms — Cloud Foundry, Heroku, Fly.io, or equivalent — where simplicity of developer experience was the primary design constraint. Proficiency in lean product methodologies — Lean Enterprise, Continuous Delivery, DORA metrics — and the ability to coach teams and stakeholders on their application. Familiarity with DevSecOps practices including Platform as a Service (PaaS), path-to-production pipelines, and Continuous Authority to Operate (cATO) frameworks. Experience designing and managing an InnerSource or OSS contribution governance model across multiple teams or business units. Active Security Clearance. Salary The annual salary range for this role as it is posted is $225,000 to $250,000 regardless of final candidate location within the United States. The final job level and annual salary will be determined based on the education, qualification, knowledge, skills, ability, and experience of the final candidate(s), and calibrated against relevant market data and internal team equity. Benefits Flexible schedule in a 100% distributed workforce. Premium Insurance: We cover up to 100% of the employee premium and up to 80% of the combined dependent premium on our base health plan, depending on pay band. We also cover 100% of the premium for employee and dependent Dental and Vision as well as employee premiums for Life and Disability coverage. Retirement: 401k match at 10% gross pay. Paid time off (PTO): 4 weeks combined accrued vacation and sick leave, 11 Federal holidays, your birthday, jury duty, and bereavement. Education & Training: Accrued budget of up to $3,500 per year for classes, travel, events, and materials. Home Office and Merch: We offer $750 per year for home office technology and equipment as well as $100 per year for Rise8 merch from our Swag Store. Wellness Budget: To encourage and support a well-rounded healthy lifestyle, we cover 100% reimbursement on a variety of wellness activities and products, up to $500 per calendar year. Rise8 is part of the Life Time Corporate Partner program. In lieu of your $500 annual wellness benefit, you can instead get a $75 monthly credit towards a Life Time membership ($900 annual benefit). Equipment: We offer a MacBook Pro. All of Rise8’s work in this area is with Federal Government customers that require our employees involved with their projects be U.S. citizens. As such, this role requires U.S. citizenship. If hired, you would also be required to go through a background investigation. Rise8 is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer that will consider you for this role regardless of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, gender identity or expression, national origin, genetics, age, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.