Director of Product Engineering

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Mentor and guide engineers of varying experience levels, particularly focusing on empowering Lead Developers while promoting a culture of ownership and accountability.

• Cultivate an inclusive, high-trust atmosphere where engineers feel supported, challenged, and invested in the overall success of the team.

• Maintain team alignment, motivation, and focus during periods of growth and change.

• Assess, enhance, and build upon the existing processes and structures within the team.

• Propel continuous improvement in the team’s planning, shipping, and iteration methods — advocating for best practices in Agile/Scrum, code reviews, documentation, and delivery.

• Ensure the team is equipped with the appropriate tools, workflows, and operational support to work efficiently and sustainably.

• Establish and uphold architectural direction alongside engineers and leadership — engaging meaningfully in technical trade-offs and validating AI-assisted design decisions, without the necessity of being a hands-on developer.

• Take ownership of the governance model for agentic systems — including agent scope and escalation paths, data access for agents, error propagation, and security, reliability, testability, and cost guardrails — in collaboration with the CPTO and security/data governance. This is a responsibility you will directly oversee.

• Set standards for assessing AI-assisted and AI-driven work: output validation, lightweight evaluation/benchmarking, and considering costs at the architectural level from the outset.

• Ensure that technical debt is monitored, prioritized, and managed systematically, assisting the team in making informed build/buy/integrate decisions.

• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, Data Engineering, and other stakeholders to align engineering capacity and priorities with business objectives.

• Convert business requirements into clear engineering objectives, helping the team navigate competing priorities with clarity and confidence.

• Represent engineering in leadership and planning discussions, advocating for the team's needs and capabilities.

• Work with Talent Acquisition and leadership to thoughtfully expand the team — defining roles, conducting interviews, and effectively onboarding new engineers.

• Develop a strategic approach to team composition for the AI era, balancing senior leverage with a sustainable pipeline of growing engineers — avoiding an inverted, "senior-only" structure that diminishes future capacity.

• Create career paths and growth frameworks that reward ownership, sound judgment, and technical excellence.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 10 years of experience in software engineering, with more than 6 years in engineering leadership roles (such as Engineering Manager, Senior Engineering Manager, Director, or equivalent).

• Proven ability to lead through other leaders (Engineering Managers, Lead Developers, Staff+ engineers) and scale delivery across multiple workstreams.

• A strong history of managing the full people-leadership cycle: hiring, onboarding, performance management, coaching, and career development and leveling.

• Experience in building and maintaining robust engineering processes: planning and estimation, sprint or iteration rituals, prioritization, incident management, and continuous improvement.

• Demonstrated ability to operationalize AI across the software development life cycle (SDLC) at a team or organizational level — not merely personal tool usage — with clear standards for quality and review.

• Proficient in output validation and AI-system governance: assessing AI-assisted code and architecture for correctness, security, and appropriateness; and defining agent scope, guardrails, and escalation paths.

• The capability to engage in architectural discussions and technical trade-offs meaningfully, without the requirement of being a hands-on developer.

• Experience guiding teams through various transitions — whether organizational, technical, or cultural — with a calm and structured methodology.

🏝️ Benefits

• Health/Dental/Vision Insurance

• Life Insurance

• Short-Term Disability

• Long-Term Disability

• Paid Time Off (PTO) & company holidays

• 401k with Employer Match

• Company-wide social events and programs

• Dog-friendly office located in downtown Denver