Engineering Leader, Platform Engineering

ClassDojo 's goal is to give every child on Earth an education they love. We started by building a communication network that connects teachers, children, and families. Today, ClassDojo is used in the vast majority of U.S. schools and reaches tens of millions of children and families globally. We're now expanding beyond communication into building the best possible learning experiences for kids everywhere. We're a small, high-talent-density team with experience from leading technology companies. We value ownership, speed, and thoughtful decision-making, and we aim to create an environment where people can do the best work of their careers. We're hiring an Engineering Leader to own ClassDojo's Platform engineering org end-to-end for infrastructure, data, developer experience, and AI tooling. As the Engineering Lead for Platform, you'll manage the engineering managers across these teams as well as perform the EM role for teams when needed. You’ll work with our product engineering areas as your customers, set platform engineering practices and quality, and make the build-vs-buy and architecture trade-offs that shape how every engineer at ClassDojo ships. This is a manager-of-managers role with real architectural and strategic ownership. You'll have 2 to 4 engineering managers reporting in, and your work multiplies across the entire engineering org. You will be expected to set direction, not just execute on it. What You'll Do Lead a multi-team Platform org • Own Platform's company-level objectives and the engineering plan that delivers them. • Translate company priorities and product-engineering needs into a platform roadmap, in a way that flows both up and down. • Be responsible for build-vs-buy and architecture-level trade-offs across infrastructure, data, developer experience, and AI tooling; own the technical roadmap and how it balances against the needs of your customers. • Represent Platform and collaborate with cross-functional leadership partners and in engineering-wide leadership conversations. Develop the engineering managers reporting to you • Coach EMs to a higher bar with clear feedback, growth plans, and direct support. • Drive AI-native development in line with ClassDojo’s engineering practices (flow-based delivery, vertical slicing, WIP discipline, Definition of Done, observability) • Address performance issues early and clearly; develop managers out of "fine" performance into great performance. • Be directive when our values, quality bar, or ways of working are at stake. Run platform towards the long term • Treat the product engineering areas as customers: understand their needs, measure adoption and satisfaction, and prioritize accordingly. • Build paved roads and golden paths that teams want to use; earn adoption rather than mandating it. • Take accountability for SLAs/SLOs and incident response across the platform surface. • Make tech-debt and reliability trade-offs on purpose, not by accident. Drive technical excellence across the platform • Support and drive architecture and systems design decisions across infrastructure, data, DevEx, and AI tooling; ensure systems are reliable, maintainable, and operationally ready. • Make build-vs-buy calls deliberately; avoid both not-invented-here and unmanaged sprawl. Partner cross-functionally • Co-own the platform roadmap and quality bar with the product engineering leads who depend on you. • Partner with Security, Ops, Data, and other functions as the platform requires. • Build pragmatic interim solutions that work today and migrate cleanly as platform capabilities mature. You Will Be a Match If You… • 2+ years managing managers, with direct reports who were themselves people managers. • 10+ years total in technical roles, with a strong indi