Principal Engineering Advisor Design

DX helps engineering leaders build high-performing, productive teams through a platform that delivers actionable insights into developer experience and productivity. The company works with organizations including Netflix, Uber, Dell, Pfizer, and Vanguard.

How we work at DX:

At DX, performance is judged by individual mastery and becoming the best at your craft. The focus is on doing the job at the highest level possible.

About the role

We're looking for a Software Engineering Leadership Advisor to join the DX team as a practitioner voice and executive-level advisor. The ideal candidate is someone who has lived the problems our audience faces—someone who has scaled engineering organizations, navigated the transition to AI-assisted development, and made real decisions about developer productivity with real consequences. Someone who Fortune 500 VPs of Engineering and CTOs already respect or would otherwise recognize as a peer.

You'll work within our research team to translate data and findings into practitioner-grounded commentary, frameworks, and guidance that resonates with senior engineering leaders. You'll represent DX externally at executive dinners, on conference stages, on panels, and in advisory conversations with our largest customers. You'll be the person in the room who makes engineering leaders lean in because you've done what they're trying to do.

Think of this role as part industry advisor, part executive coach, part practitioner-in-residence. You bring the credibility and the relationships. We bring the data, the platform, and the publishing engine.

Responsibilities

Practitioner commentary and thought leadership

• Provide practitioner-grounded commentary on research findings, data analyses, and frameworks produced by the research team. You're the person who looks at the data and says "here's what this actually means if you're running a 500-person engineering org."

• Co-author and contribute to flagship reports, essays, and talks.

• Develop and contribute to practitioner frameworks, playbooks, and maturity models drawn from your own experience and your network's collective wisdom.

Executive advisory and customer engagement

• Serve as a trusted advisor to DX's largest customers and prospects. Lead workshops, advisory sessions, and executive briefings where engineering leaders are looking for guidance from someone who's been in their seat.

• Participate in customer inquiries and consultations helping engineering leaders apply DX's research and data to their specific organizational challenges.

• Build and maintain relationships with senior engineering leaders across the industry. You should already have a network of VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and Heads of Platform/DevEx.

External presence and industry influence

• Represent DX on conference stages, executive panels, industry podcasts, and at invite-only dinners and roundtables.

• Be a visible, recognized voice in the developer productivity and engineering leadership community.

• Build DX's reputation as the place where senior engineering leaders go for guidance.

Shipping cadence

Each member of this team is expected to produce:

• Two "small ships" per month

quick, high-signal pieces that capture one strong insight or idea. For you, these will lean toward practitioner commentary and applied guidance. For example:

• Your take on a trend the research team is seeing in the data, what it means in practice and what leaders should do about it.

• Lessons or frameworks from your own experience leading engineering organizations, connected to DX's data and research.

• Key takeaways and commentary from an executive dinner, panel, or advisory conversation.

• One "big ship" per quarter

a flagship report or talk that combines data, practitioner perspective, and actionable guidance into something that reframes how leaders think about a problem. For example:

• A practitioner's guide to a complex topic (e.g., measuring AI impact, building a platform team, scaling developer experience) grounded in both your experience and DX's data.

• A co-authored report with the research team where you provide the practitioner framing and real-world context.

• A compilation of advisory insights and patterns you're seeing across customer conversations.

Qualifications

Who you are

• You've led engineering organizations or platform/developer experience teams at scale—typically as a VP of Engineering, Head of Platform, Head of Developer Experience, Senior Director of Engineering, or similar. You've made real decisions about developer productivity, tooling, and team design with real consequences.

• You are known and respected by senior engineering leaders. VPs of Engineering and CTOs at Fortune 500 companies would take your call, attend your talk, or want you at their dinner table.

• You've been on stages, on panels, on podcasts, or in rooms where senior engineering leaders gather.

• You can provide sharp, credible commentary on data and research without needing to run the analysis yourself. You know how to read a dataset, provide commentary or reactions, and translate it into guidance that a busy CTO would act on.

• You're a strong writer and communicator.

• You're opinionated but intellectually honest. You have strong views on how engineering organizations should be run, but you update those views when the evidence changes.

You're looking for a role where you can

• Shape how an entire industry thinks about developer productivity and AI.

• Combine your real-world experience with data from hundreds of engineering organizations to produce guidance that actually changes how leaders operate.

• Be the person that Fortune 500 engineering leaders turn to for advice, backed by the data, brand, and distribution engine of DX and Atlassian.

• Work alongside world-class researchers and a team that takes the craft of insight seriously.

• Build a body of work you're proud of.