Upwork Inc.’s (Nasdaq: UPWK) family of companies connects businesses with global, AI-enabled talent across every contingent work type including freelance, fractional, and payrolled. This portfolio includes the Upwork Marketplace, which connects businesses with on-demand access to highly skilled talent across the globe, and Lifted, which provides a purpose-built solution for enterprise organizations to source, contract, manage, and pay talent across the full spectrum of contingent work. From Fortune 100 enterprises to entrepreneurs, businesses rely on Upwork Inc. to find and hire expert talent, leverage AI-powered work solutions, and drive business transformation. With access to professionals spanning more than 10,000 skills across AI & machine learning, software development, sales & marketing, customer support, finance & accounting, and more, the Upwork family of companies enables businesses of all sizes to scale, innovate, and transform their workforces for the age of AI and beyond.
Since its founding, Upwork Inc. has facilitated more than $30 billion in total transactions and services as it fulfills its purpose to create opportunity in every era of work. Learn more about the Upwork Marketplace at Upwork.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X; and learn more about Lifted at Go-Lifted and follow on LinkedIn.
As the Director of Platform Operations, you’ll lead the evolution of Upwork’s foundational infrastructure, ensuring our platform’s resilience, scalability, and innovation-readiness. You’ll oversee a globally distributed team driving initiatives across Kubernetes modernization, CI/CD platform services, developer tooling, and AI/ML infrastructure enablement. This high-impact leadership role requires strategic vision, operational excellence, and deep collaboration across engineering, product, and business teams to scale Upwork’s next-generation platform capabilities.
Responsibilities- Lead global operations for core infrastructure platforms, including Kubernetes (EKS), developer environments, CI/CD systems, and enterprise integrations, ensuring performance, reliability, and security.
- Define and execute the roadmap for secure, multi-tenant infrastructure that powers engineering and AI/ML workloads across the company.
- Drive automation for build and release processes, incident response, and compliance readiness while maintaining strong reliability standards.
- Oversee platform-wide observability, including logging, monitoring, distributed tracing, and SLO instrumentation.
- Partner with AI platform teams to operationalize next-gen infrastructure such as GPU provisioning, MCP/Agent Marketplace, and model-serving environments.
- Recruit, mentor, and scale a high-performing, globally distributed team that fosters innovation and technical excellence.
- Represent infrastructure operations in strategic planning and architectural reviews, influencing company-wide platform investments and direction.
- Proven experience (10+ years) in software engineering with 3+ years leading high-performing infrastructure or platform teams.
- Deep technical expertise in cloud-native systems, Kubernetes, CI/CD platforms, and distributed systems operations.
- Experience designing and scaling AI/ML platforms for model training, deployment, and monitoring.
- Demonstrated success in building reusable, self-service platforms that accelerate developer productivity.
- A growth-minded leader with exceptional communication and collaboration skills who thrives in cross-functional environments.
Upwork is establishing its first international operational hub in Lisbon, Portugal. The new office is expected to be fully operational by Q4 2026. This role will require 3 days in office once we have an office open.
This position will initially be employed through a partner to ensure a seamless hiring process while we establish the hub. Once the hub is established, there may be opportunities to transition to employment with Upwork, depending on business needs and other requirements. While employed by the partner, you’ll work as part of Upwork’s team, with access to our resources, culture, and growth opportunities.
Our partner will offer competitive benefits. When Upwork’s hub is established, we will be excited to offer employment and benefits directly as business needs require.
Upwork is committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workforce. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or any other status protected by applicable law.
Upwork is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, or other legally protected characteristics under federal, state, or local law.
Please note that a criminal background check may be required once a conditional job offer is made. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered in accordance with applicable law, including the California Fair Chance Act and local Fair Chance ordinances. The Company is committed to conducting an individualized assessment and giving all individuals a fair opportunity to provide relevant information or context before making any final employment decision.
To learn more about how Upwork processes and protects your personal information as part of the application process, please review our Global Job Applicant Privacy Notice
