### **Why This Role, Why Now**
NetBox Labs is crossing a threshold: from a set of strong teams to a
coordinated multi-team organization.
We are evolving from a single product into a multi-product platform, operating
across both SaaS and on-prem delivery models. We are standardizing shared
foundations across teams while continuing to ship.
Today, the CTO carries both strategic and operational responsibility. We are
creating this VP of Engineering role to own day-to-day engineering execution —
delivery, people development, and cross-team coordination — so the CTO can
focus on strategy. The goal is to build a system that reliably turns strategy
into shipped product.
At the same time, the company is committing to a step-function shift toward
AI-native engineering. This is not incremental optimization. It is a
redefinition of how software is built. This is the company’s top
organizational priority, and it is already underway.
You will not be starting from scratch. You will be joining a system mid-
transformation and expected to accelerate it.
### **What You’ll Own**
**Scrappy execution**
You are comfortable making pragmatic progress without perfect structure,
complete resourcing, or full alignment. You unblock teams by simplifying
problems, making tradeoffs explicit, and moving work forward with the
resources available.
You create momentum in imperfect conditions, tightening the system over time
rather than waiting for it to be designed upfront.
**The engineering organization**
You will lead three engineering directors and their teams. You are accountable
for leadership quality, team performance, and output.
**Execution system**
You own how work gets done: planning, cycles, release coordination, and cross-
team execution. The core challenge is across teams: coordinating multiple
products, shared platform work, and dual delivery models.
You will shape team boundaries and interfaces so teams can move quickly with
minimal coordination overhead. This includes clarifying ownership, reducing
cognitive load, and defining clean contracts between teams.
AI-native practices are a core part of the execution system: spec-driven
development, AI-assisted implementation and review, and faster iteration
cycles with stronger verification and operational rigor.
**Quality and operational discipline**
You own the systems that protect velocity: CI/CD, testing strategy,
reliability, and incident response.
We are investing in an AI accountability model: progressively delegating work
to AI systems with guardrails based on risk. Your role is to operationalize
this — not as a concept, but as daily engineering practice.
**People and performance**
You own hiring, performance management, and leadership development.
You will partner with the CTO on org design as the company scales.
### **What You Won’t Own**
**Technical direction**
The CTO and a principal engineering group own architecture and long-term
technical strategy.
You are expected to engage and challenge, but your primary responsibility is
execution against that direction.
**Product roadmap**
Product reports separately to a VP of Product.
You will partner closely, but you do not own prioritization.
### **What Success Looks Like (12 Months)**
* Engineering delivers predictably across multiple products and delivery models without executive intervention
* Directors independently run high-functioning teams with minimal escalation
* Platform (Foundations) investment materially reduces delivery friction and duplication of work
* Cross-team coordination no longer blocks major initiatives
* AI-native practices measurably improve throughput and/or quality
* The CTO is fully out of day-to-day execution management
### **The Complexities You’ll Navigate**
**You are joining mid-flight**
Org structure, operating model, and AI practices are all evolving
simultaneously.
You will need to quickly distinguish:
* What is working and should be reinforced
* What is fragile and needs structure
* What is wrong and needs to change
**AI-native is real, but immature**
We have a framework and early adoption, but not consistency.
You will need to push adoption where it creates leverage, constrain it where
it creates risk, and build systems that maintain comprehension and quality.
**Hybrid SaaS + on-prem is operationally harder**
On-prem environments introduce less observability, less control, and slower
feedback loops compared to SaaS.
If you default to SaaS-only assumptions, you will break things.
**Multiple products, shared foundations**
Operating multiple products on shared infrastructure introduces coordination
challenges that require deliberate system design. The goal is clear ownership
and well-defined interaction patterns so teams can operate independently where
possible and collaborate intentionally where necessary.
**You inherit leaders to develop**
You will inherit a group of engineering directors with diverse strengths and
growth areas.
Your role is to help them operate as a cohesive leadership team with clear
expectations, strong execution discipline, and shared accountability.
This role emphasizes:
* Coaching and support
* Clarity of expectations
* Consistent follow-through
You will work through these leaders, not around them.
### **Role Boundaries**
This is not a CTO-in-waiting role. You will not own technical direction,
architecture, or long-term technology strategy.
Your mandate is to build and run the execution system that turns that strategy
into reality.
Your role is to build a system that scales beyond individual leaders.
### **What We’re Looking For**
You should expect to form strong opinions quickly and act on them within
weeks, not months.
**Pragmatic operator**
You have a bias toward progress. You can move work forward with incomplete
information, limited resources, and evolving structure. You know when to
invest in process — and when to bypass it to get results.
You simplify, prioritize, and execute rather than waiting for ideal
conditions.
**Scaled engineering leadership (40–100 engineers)**
You have built and run an engineering organization at this size. You know how
to introduce structure without slowing teams down.
**Execution track record**
You have owned outcomes: shipped products, improved delivery systems, and
fixed execution failures.
**Infrastructure / platform fluency**
You can engage credibly with engineers building infrastructure, developer
tooling, and systems software.
**Manager of managers**
You develop leaders. You hold them accountable. You make them better.
**AI-native conviction (grounded in practice)**
You have hands-on exposure to AI-assisted development and a point of view on
how it changes engineering.
**Hands-on when needed**
You can dive into the work to understand how things actually function —
reading code when useful, asking sharp questions, using modern tooling
(including AI) to investigate, and helping teams unblock.
### About NetBox Labs:
NetBox Labs helps companies build and manage complex networks. We help
customers accelerate network automation by delivering open, composable
products and supporting the network automation community.
NetBox Labs is the commercial steward of open source NetBox, the world’s most
popular network source of truth, and Orb, the next-generation open source
network observability platform. Our products include NetBox Enterprise, a
fully supported self-managed NetBox with advanced features, and NetBox Cloud,
a secure, scalable, and reliable SaaS edition of NetBox.
NetBox powers thousands of companies, and NetBox Labs is backed by investment
from Notable Capital (formerly GGV), Grafana Labs CEO Raj Dutt, Flybridge,
IBM, Salesforce Ventures, and Mango Capital.
### Our culture and values:
* We own and solve problems with high attention to detail.
* Our open source contributors, users, customers & team are all part of our community. When our community wins, we win.
* We prioritize simplicity and think twice before adding complexity
* Clear communication helps keep our team aligned and collaborating smoothly.
NetBox Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We believe diverse
teams build better software, and we welcome applicants of every race, color,
religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age,
disability, and veteran status. If you need accommodation at any point in the
process, just let us know.