Director of Software Engineering - Data Platforms - #4919 at GRAIL
Sunnyvale, CA
$224,000–$321,000from the description
Jul 28, 2026
Sunnyvale, CA
Sep 24, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A Director of Software Engineering role leading GRAIL's Data Platform engineering organization, responsible for technical strategy, architecture, and delivery of a cloud-native data platform at petabyte scale. The position combines hands-on architectural oversight of big data, AI/LLM, and cloud infrastructure with people leadership of a global, multi-disciplinary engineering team of 10+ engineers. The role sits in Sunnyvale, CA on a hybrid schedule.
Principal level · 15+ years · San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
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How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 5 people in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (computer and information systems managers). range 3–7
Applicant volume Light — Few people clear these requirements, so an application that does clear them gets looked at. Worth applying to even if you miss a nice-to-have.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $298,074 (middle half $224,695–$326,567). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Aug 1, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The posting requires 5+ years in a dedicated engineering leadership role managing cross-functional global teams, in addition to the 15+ year overall software engineering floor.
Master's degree is listed as 'preferred'; a Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering or equivalent practical experience is the stated minimum — the degree requirement is set to Bachelors accordingly.
Domain experience in genomics, healthcare, bioinformatics, fintech, or familiarity with GA4GH data standards is described as 'highly desirable' — not a hard gate.
Databricks and REST/RESTful APIs appear in the responsibilities narrative rather than the explicit Required Qualifications technical stack section, so they are marked preferred.
CI/CD is named as a practice in the responsibilities section; Terraform, Ansible, and Jenkins are the specific named tools listed under Required Qualifications and are marked required.
The alt SOC (15-1252 Software Developers) is noted because the role carries substantial hands-on architectural expectations alongside its people-management duties, making the classification a genuine judgment call — however, the explicit team-scaling, budget ownership, and executive-stakeholder framing tips it to 11-3021.
Read the full posting
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