Senior Director - Engineering

Organizations everywhere struggle under the crushing costs and complexities of “solutions” that promise to simplify their lives. To create a better experience for their customers and employees. To help them grow. Software is a choice that can make or break a business. Create better or worse experiences. Propel or throttle growth. Business software has become a blocker instead of ways to get work done.

There’s another option. Freshworks. With a fresh vision for how the world works.

At Freshworks, we build uncomplicated service software that delivers exceptional customer and employee experiences. Our enterprise-grade solutions are powerful, yet easy to use, and quick to deliver results. Our people-first approach to AI eliminates friction, making employees more effective and organizations more productive. Over 72,000 companies, including Bridgestone, New Balance, Nucor, S&P Global, and Sony Music, trust Freshworks’ customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) software to fuel customer loyalty and service efficiency. And, over 4,500 Freshworks employees make this possible, all around the world.

Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.

Job Description

Responsibilities:

At Freshworks, we are building the future of customer and employee engagement. Our Platform is the bedrock upon which our products are built, enabling thousands of businesses to champion their customers daily. We are looking for a visionary technology leader to take the charge of our Platform group, a leader who makes bold moves and inspires their teams to set high standards for craftsmanship, resilience, and scale.

As the Senior Director of Engineering for Platform, you will be empowered to make an impact by owning the strategic vision and technical execution for all core services. You will lead a world-class organization of engineers and managers, fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration where we win as one team. This is a pivotal role with the opportunity to influence our entire product portfolio and deliver the speed and reliability our customers depend on.

The Impact You Will Create

As the Senior Director of Engineering for Platform, you will not just oversee infrastructure—you will architect the intelligence engine that powers Freshworks. By owning the strategic vision for our core data and analytics services, your work will influence our entire product portfolio and fundamentally change how thousands of businesses champion their customers.

Your leadership will drive transformative outcomes in the following ways:

• Pioneer Next-Gen, AI-Driven Insights: You will transition our ecosystem from reactive dashboards to proactive intelligence. By partnering with AI/ML teams to build "agentic insights" and AI Copilots, you will empower users with systems that predict risks, detect anomalies, and recommend next-best actions in real-time.
• Architect a World-Class Data Ecosystem: You will own and scale the modern data platform (Databricks Lakehouse), building highly reliable, secure, and compliant data pipelines (bronze/silver/gold patterns) that serve as the absolute "single source of truth" across the organization.
• Close the "Insights-to-Action" Loop: You will drive a product mindset across analytics, ensuring that data doesn't just inform, but acts. Your self-serve data products and MVPs will directly accelerate decision velocity, improve SLA performance, reduce risks, and drive tangible ROI and revenue acceleration.
• Build and Inspire a High-Velocity Organization: You will cultivate a culture of deep craftsmanship and innovation, leading a multi-disciplinary, world-class organization of engineers, data product leaders, and BI developers to execute complex roadmaps under ambitious deadlines.
• Champion Engineering Excellence at Scale: Acting as the ultimate technical authority for the platform, you will guide the design of large-scale, highly resilient, distributed cloud systems and microservices, ensuring our products deliver the uncompromising speed and reliability our customers depend on.

Key responsibilities

• Lead a multi-disciplinary org: analytics engineers, BI developers, and data product leaders.
• Build scalable pipelines and data products (bronze/silver/gold patterns), ensuring data quality, lineage, and reliability.
• Establish governance: access controls, data classification, privacy/PII handling, audits, and compliance-ready practices.
• Drive an insights product mindset: stakeholder discovery, prioritization, MVPs, adoption measurement, iteration.
• Deliver executive-ready narratives and business reviews: concise insights, drivers, recommendations, and clear next steps.
• Define and track impact: adoption, decision velocity, deflection, productivity gains, risk reduction, and ROI.
• Work with the Data Science team on creating state of the art models.

What You'll Do (Responsibilities)

• Set the Analytics & Insights vision : Define the strategy, roadmap, and operating model to deliver reliable, outcome-focused insights across Product, Support, Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Operations.
• Build proactive intelligence : Ship systems that detect anomalies, forecast risk, and surface emerging trends—pushing insights to stakeholders proactively (not waiting for dashboards).
• Deliver agentic insights : Partner with AI/ML and product teams to build AI assistants/agents (e.g., an “Insights Copilot”) that answer questions, generate narratives, recommend next-best actions, and integrate into the tools teams already use.
• Own the modern data + insights platform : Lead the end-to-end analytics ecosystem on Databricks (Lakehouse) —including orchestration, governance, semantic layer, and BI—to maximize speed, trust, and scalability.
• Establish a single source of truth : Standardize KPI definitions and metric governance, ensuring consistent reporting and decision-making across teams.
• Scale self-serve analytics : Drive adoption through curated data products, templates, enablement programs, and strong stakeholder partnerships that reduce ad-hoc asks and increase autonomy.
• Close the insights-to-action loop : Build processes and tooling so insights translate into decisions and measurable impact (cost reduction, retention lift, improved SLA performance, faster resolution, revenue acceleration).
• Lead & Inspire: Cultivate a high-performance, inclusive culture across a multi-tiered organization of engineers and managers. Mentor the next generation of technical leaders and build a world-class team that is known for its technical excellence and execution velocity.
• Execute with Excellence: Master the entire development lifecycle, from strategic planning and roadmap management to deployment and operations. Champion agile and iterative development methodologies to ship exceptional products under ambitious deadlines and evolving business priorities.
• Drive Technical & Architectural Strategy: Act as the ultimate technical authority for the platform. Guide your teams in building large-scale, distributed cloud systems and microservices architecture, ensuring we are always adopting best practices and cutting-edge technologies.
• Collaborate to Win: Build powerful partnerships with leaders in Product, Operations, and GTM to ensure the platform roadmap is perfectly aligned with business needs and customer expectations. Foster a "one team" mindset to solve complex, cross-functional challenges.
• Champion Innovation & Quality: Foster a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and the adoption of new technologies. Establish and track key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure platform health, reliability, and business impact.

Qualifications

What You'll Bring (Qualifications)

• A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, with a proven track record of at least 5 years in a senior leadership role (Director or above) managing platform or core infrastructure teams.
• Demonstrable experience building, scaling, and leading high-performing product and engineering organizations in an enterprise SaaS environment.
• A strong technical foundation in building and operating large-scale, distributed systems on public cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).

Skills Inventory

• Leadership & Talent Management:
  • Inspirational Leadership & Mentorship
  • Talent Acquisition & Retention
  • Organizational Design & Scaling
  • Performance Management & Career Development
• Technical & Architectural Acumen:
  • Cloud Computing & Microservices Architecture
  • Large-Scale Distributed Systems Design
  • DevOps, CI/CD, and SRE Principles
  • Data Security & Compliance Frameworks
• Strategic & Business Acumen:
  • Long-Term Strategic Planning & Vision Setting
  • Roadmap Development & Prioritization
  • Budget & Resource Management
  • Data-Driven Decision Making & KPI Management
• Execution & Collaboration:
  • Agile & Iterative Development Methodologies
  • Cross-Functional Influence & Stakeholder Management
  • Exceptional Communication & Interpersonal Skills
  • Problem-Solving & Crisis Management

Additional Information

At Freshworks, we have fostered an environment that enables everyone to find their true potential, purpose, and passion, welcoming colleagues of all backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and ethnicities. We are committed to providing equal opportunity and believe that diversity in the workplace creates a more vibrant, richer environment that boosts the goals of our employees, communities, and business. Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.