David Stockton

VP of Engineering

Wirral, England, United Kingdom25 yrs 4 mos experience

Highly Stable

Key Highlights

20+ years of experience in engineering leadership.
Expert in scaling distributed engineering organizations.
Strong focus on aligning engineering with business growth.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS engineering leader with extensive experience in scaling teams and enhancing platform reliability.

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Skills

Core Skills

Engineering ManagementTechnical LeadershipEngineering Leadership

Other Skills

Scaling distributed engineering organisationsPlatform reliabilitySecurityComplianceCloud infrastructureDirector levelKey MetricsProduct DeliveryQuality AssuranceResource PlanningProduct Road MappingCustomer SatisfactionInterpersonal CommunicationMentoringStrategic Planning

About

Engineering leader with 20+ years of experience building and scaling high-performing teams, platforms, and organisations across cloud-native and developer-focused products. Currently VP of Engineering at Directus, where I lead a globally distributed engineering organisation, scaling the team, strengthening execution, and aligning engineering delivery with product and commercial priorities. I work closely with the founding CEO and CTO to shape strategy, improve predictability, and build an enterprise-grade engineering function that supports rapid growth and a global developer community. Previously Director of Engineering and EMEA Site Lead at Confluent, leading large platform teams and operating at global scale. I have owned multi-million dollar budgets and delivered secure, reliable services across 100+ cloud regions and 5,000+ Kubernetes clusters. I specialise in: • Scaling distributed engineering organisations • Platform reliability, security, and compliance (BCP and DR) • Building strong leadership layers and people-first cultures • Driving measurable business impact through engineering execution I’m passionate about building world-class engineering organisations, developing senior leaders, and ensuring engineering strategy is tightly aligned with business growth, customer outcomes, and long-term sustainability.

Experience

25 yrs 4 mos

Total Experience

4 yrs 3 mos

Average Tenure

4 mos

Current Experience

Directus

Vice President of Engineering

Jan 2026 – Present · 4 mos · Remote

I lead and scale a globally distributed engineering organisation, building an enterprise-grade function that supports rapid product growth and a global developer community.
My role sits at the intersection of technology, product, and commercial strategy. I turn business priorities into clear technical roadmaps, provide visibility on progress and trade-offs, and ensure engineering is aligned with product, marketing, and sales. Clear communication is a core part of the job, including regular company-wide updates and stakeholder management.
I work closely with the founding CEO and CTO, providing complementary leadership by shaping strategy, managing expectations, and helping the organisation understand technical direction and priorities.
A major focus of my work is improving execution. I identify bottlenecks, increase throughput, and introduce practical processes, tools, and metrics that improve predictability and accountability without slowing teams down.
I care deeply about people and culture. I hire, mentor, and develop engineers and engineering leaders, and foster a culture of ownership, technical excellence, and continuous learning.
With a strong hands-on background across modern web stacks and cloud infrastructure, I can assess technical decisions with credibility while keeping teams empowered. Externally, I represent Directus through community engagement, thought leadership, and industry events.

Scaling distributed engineering organisationsPlatform reliabilitySecurityComplianceEngineering managementTechnical leadership+2