Senior Manager - Capacity Engineering
Role Description
As a Senior Manager of Capacity Engineering focused on the Infrastructure org, you will play a critical leadership role in shaping Dropbox’s long-term infrastructure and cost efficiency strategy. You’ll lead a high-impact team responsible for planning, forecasting, and optimizing capacity across our hybrid cloud and on-prem environments.
Impact Areas: You will own key areas including strategic capacity planning, infrastructure cost optimization, and cross-functional alignment with finance, engineering, and product. Your leadership will directly impact Dropbox’s ability to scale efficiently, improve gross margin, and maintain reliability at massive scale.
What You Will Gain: You will drive strategic initiatives and influence high-stakes decisions across Dropbox’s infrastructure stack. This role offers extensive exposure to senior leadership, the opportunity to lead a high-performing team, and a platform to shape foundational systems that support 800M+ users. You’ll operate in a dynamic, collaborative environment with strong visibility and the ability to deliver measurable business impact.
Our Engineering Career Framework is viewable by anyone outside the company and describes what’s expected for our engineers at each of our career levels. Check out our blog post on this topic and more here.
Responsibilities
CapEx Optimization and Infra Cost Strategy: Own and optimize a capital budget. Drive long-term strategies that align infrastructure investments with Dropbox’s gross margin goals, balancing reliability and cost across global workloads.
Hybrid Infrastructure Planning: Shape the strategic direction of Dropbox’s hybrid cloud footprint. Lead public vs. private cloud trade-off decisions, grounded in TCO models and long-term infrastructure lifecycle analysis.
Forecasting and Demand Planning: Build and refine multi-year capacity forecasts that translate product and user growth into infrastructure requirements. Guide decisions across build-vs-buy, lifecycle management, and risk mitigation.
Infra Cost Strategy and Visibility: Partner with finance and infrastructure leadership to improve cost observability and efficiency. Lead initiatives to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) across cloud and on-prem environments.
Tooling and Automation: Oversee the design and adoption of planning and optimization tools, including automation pipelines and dashboards that enable real-time capacity insights and agile planning.
Cross-Functional Alignment: Act as the connective tissue between infrastructure, product, engineering, finance, Supply Chain and data center operations to ensure technical and financial alignment across planning cycles.
Team Leadership: Manage and grow a high-performing team with expertise in capacity engineering, forecasting, and infrastructure automation. Foster a culture of ownership, rigor, and continuous improvement.
Requirements
BS or MS degree in Computer Science, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering or equivalent technical experience
15+ years of experience in capacity planning, supply chain optimization, and manufacturing operations, with 5+ years in cross-functional leadership roles.
Proven track record leading large-scale capacity planning efforts, multi-year infrastructure strategies, and cost optimization initiatives across hybrid environments.
Strong command of global forecasting cycles, demand-supply alignment, S&OP, and financial modeling.
Demonstrated ability to drive infrastructure utilization and cost efficiency through close partnership with engineering, finance, product, and operations.
Skilled in translating complex data into actionable insights for executive stakeholders.
Experienced in building and scaling planning systems and automation to improve visibility, agility, and operational effectiveness.
Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills, with a history of delivering high-impact global programs.
Preferred Qualifications
Background in operations research, optimization, or industrial engineering applied to infrastructure or manufacturing systems.
Hands-on experience managing infrastructure forecasting and capacity planning across hybrid environments.
Experience working in high-scale technology environments (e.g., hyperscalers, logistics platforms, or hardware-focused teams).
Familiarity with or willingness to engage with public cloud cost modeling, data center supply chain systems, and TCO analysis frameworks.
Strong executive communication and a proven ability to translate technical complexity into actionable business insights.
Compensation
US Zone 1
$236,300—$319,700 USD
US Zone 2
$212,700—$287,700 USD
US Zone 3
$189,000—$255,800 USD
About the job
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Senior Manager - Capacity Engineering
Role Description
As a Senior Manager of Capacity Engineering focused on the Infrastructure org, you will play a critical leadership role in shaping Dropbox’s long-term infrastructure and cost efficiency strategy. You’ll lead a high-impact team responsible for planning, forecasting, and optimizing capacity across our hybrid cloud and on-prem environments.
Impact Areas: You will own key areas including strategic capacity planning, infrastructure cost optimization, and cross-functional alignment with finance, engineering, and product. Your leadership will directly impact Dropbox’s ability to scale efficiently, improve gross margin, and maintain reliability at massive scale.
What You Will Gain: You will drive strategic initiatives and influence high-stakes decisions across Dropbox’s infrastructure stack. This role offers extensive exposure to senior leadership, the opportunity to lead a high-performing team, and a platform to shape foundational systems that support 800M+ users. You’ll operate in a dynamic, collaborative environment with strong visibility and the ability to deliver measurable business impact.
Our Engineering Career Framework is viewable by anyone outside the company and describes what’s expected for our engineers at each of our career levels. Check out our blog post on this topic and more here.
Responsibilities
CapEx Optimization and Infra Cost Strategy: Own and optimize a capital budget. Drive long-term strategies that align infrastructure investments with Dropbox’s gross margin goals, balancing reliability and cost across global workloads.
Hybrid Infrastructure Planning: Shape the strategic direction of Dropbox’s hybrid cloud footprint. Lead public vs. private cloud trade-off decisions, grounded in TCO models and long-term infrastructure lifecycle analysis.
Forecasting and Demand Planning: Build and refine multi-year capacity forecasts that translate product and user growth into infrastructure requirements. Guide decisions across build-vs-buy, lifecycle management, and risk mitigation.
Infra Cost Strategy and Visibility: Partner with finance and infrastructure leadership to improve cost observability and efficiency. Lead initiatives to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) across cloud and on-prem environments.
Tooling and Automation: Oversee the design and adoption of planning and optimization tools, including automation pipelines and dashboards that enable real-time capacity insights and agile planning.
Cross-Functional Alignment: Act as the connective tissue between infrastructure, product, engineering, finance, Supply Chain and data center operations to ensure technical and financial alignment across planning cycles.
Team Leadership: Manage and grow a high-performing team with expertise in capacity engineering, forecasting, and infrastructure automation. Foster a culture of ownership, rigor, and continuous improvement.
Requirements
BS or MS degree in Computer Science, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering or equivalent technical experience
15+ years of experience in capacity planning, supply chain optimization, and manufacturing operations, with 5+ years in cross-functional leadership roles.
Proven track record leading large-scale capacity planning efforts, multi-year infrastructure strategies, and cost optimization initiatives across hybrid environments.
Strong command of global forecasting cycles, demand-supply alignment, S&OP, and financial modeling.
Demonstrated ability to drive infrastructure utilization and cost efficiency through close partnership with engineering, finance, product, and operations.
Skilled in translating complex data into actionable insights for executive stakeholders.
Experienced in building and scaling planning systems and automation to improve visibility, agility, and operational effectiveness.
Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills, with a history of delivering high-impact global programs.
Preferred Qualifications
Background in operations research, optimization, or industrial engineering applied to infrastructure or manufacturing systems.
Hands-on experience managing infrastructure forecasting and capacity planning across hybrid environments.
Experience working in high-scale technology environments (e.g., hyperscalers, logistics platforms, or hardware-focused teams).
Familiarity with or willingness to engage with public cloud cost modeling, data center supply chain systems, and TCO analysis frameworks.
Strong executive communication and a proven ability to translate technical complexity into actionable business insights.
Compensation
US Zone 1
$236,300—$319,700 USD
US Zone 2
$212,700—$287,700 USD
US Zone 3
$189,000—$255,800 USD