Sr. Director - Distinguished Engineer

At eBay, we're more than a global ecommerce leader - we’re changing the way the world shops and sells. Our platform empowers millions of buyers and sellers in more than 190 markets around the world. We’re committed to pushing boundaries and leaving our mark as we reinvent the future of ecommerce for enthusiasts.

Our customers are our compass, authenticity thrives, bold ideas are welcome, and everyone can bring their unique selves to work - every day. We're in this together, sustaining the future of our customers, our company, and our planet.

Join a team of passionate thinkers, innovators, and dreamers - and help us connect people and build communities to create economic opportunity for all.

The Role

Reporting directly to the VP of Engineering, C2C & Seller Experiences, you will serve as a lead technical visionary for the platforms and architectures that empower millions of C2C and professional sellers globally. As a Distinguished MTS, you are a high-impact technical individual contributor responsible for the end-to-end architectural integrity and technical strategy of the Seller journey.

In this role, you will define how we build, scale, and transform a high-scale legacy environment into a modern, decoupled ecosystem across Web Front-End, Native Mobile (iOS & Android), and Backend architectures (primarily Kotlin and Java, with a strategic migration away from legacy Scala). You are a practitioner-leader who balances high-level strategic design with hands-on execution, ensuring our systems are optimized for flow efficiency and colleague engagement.

Your Responsibilities

• Outcome-Led Architecture : Move beyond "feature factory" thinking. You will define technical strategies based on Outcome Hypotheses, measuring success through Better Value Sooner Safer Happier (BVSSH) metrics-prioritizing quality, unique business outcomes, time-to-learning, continuous compliance, and developer joy.
• Legacy Transformation & Modernization: Lead the architectural evolution of our core commerce systems. You will create and execute the roadmap to transform highly coupled monolithic services into a modern, distributed architecture, ensuring business continuity while radically improving system maintainability and deployment safety.
• Domain-Driven Design (DDD) & Descaling: Lead the evolution of our domain boundaries. You will apply the pattern of " Achieve Big through Small"-descaling complex systems into clean, bounded contexts that minimize cognitive load and allow multidisciplinary teams to deliver independently.
• Client-Oriented Decoupling: Leverage Federated GraphQL to drive consumer-driven contracts. You will architect the graph to empower Web and Native Mobile teams to iterate rapidly and independently of backend release cycles, ensuring a flexible and performant data layer.
• Optimize for Flow & Learning: Architect for flow efficiency, identifying and alleviating systemic impediments like waits and handoffs. You will enable fast, safe-to-fail experiments across our JVM-based services to maximize the "speed to learning."
• Psychological Safety as a Foundation: Cultivate an environment of Psychological Safety where intelligent failure is celebrated as learning. You will lead by example, encouraging experimentation and a "blameless" culture where every engineer feels empowered to innovate and challenge the status quo.
• Hands-on Practitioner: You lead by doing. You will write code, build foundational frameworks, and establish the "prior art" (patterns) that help our global engineering teams avoid common anti-patterns during the transformation journey.

Required Qualifications

• Education: Master’s degree in Computer Science, or a Bachelor’s degree with equivalent high-level architectural experience.
• Experience: 15-20+ years of relevant, broad engineering experience leading the delivery of services and large-scale distributed systems.
• Proven Track Record: Successfully delivering large-scale enterprise-wide solutions, from design to development to testing to production.
• Full-Stack Fluency : Deep understanding of Java, Kotlin, and Scala within the JVM ecosystem, alongside modern Web FE (React/Node) and Native Mobile (iOS/Android) architectures.
• Modern Infrastructure: Solid understanding of Spring, Docker, and Kubernetes, with a strong advocacy for automated testing, continuous delivery, and software quality across the entire SDLC.
• Architecture Patterns: Deep experience with service-based architectures, Domain-Driven Design, and reactive/event-driven systems.
• Transformation Mastery: Demonstrated success in modernizing highly coupled, monolithic enterprise systems and implementing Federated GraphQL for client-backend decoupling.
• Leadership & Communication: Strong customer focus and excellent relationship-building skills. Ability to frame complex problems clearly and meaningfully for both engineers and executives.
• Mentorship: Proven experience mentoring and training a broad engineering community on sophisticated technical issues.
• Mindset: A willingness to dive deep into details with an iterative approach to problems and solutions. A commitment to Psychological Safety and the principles of Sooner Safer Happier.

About the C2C & Seller Experience Engineering Team

We work in small, focused, collaborative project teams and follow an agile methodology. Our multi-functional teams from product management, product development, quality, and user experience research and development work together daily. They enjoy tackling large-scale and interesting challenges. You will feel like you’re working in a start-up, while at the same time having the resources of a large company. Working at eBay is a rewarding, challenging, and inspiring experience.

Additional Details

The base pay range for this position is expected in the range below:

Base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including location, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position may also include other elements, including a target bonus and restricted stock units (as applicable) in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits (including 401(k) eligibility and various paid time off benefits, such as PTO and parental leave). Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.

If hired, employees will be in an “at-will position” and the Company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

Remote roles are not eligible for U.S. visa sponsorship.

eBay is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, and disability, or other legally protected status. If you have a need that requires accommodation, please contact us at [email protected]. We will make every effort to respond to your request for accommodation as soon as possible. View our accessibility statement to learn more about eBay's commitment to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

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