Vice President, Software Engineering

About the role

We’re hiring a senior engineering executive to set and drive the software engineering strategy for a large, distributed product organization. You’ll partner closely with executive stakeholders (CTO, Product leadership, Security/Operations, and Compliance) to scale teams, raise quality, and deliver faster—without compromising reliability, governance, or customer trust.

This role leads engineering across a high-scale, enterprise SaaS platform with global users and significant transaction and messaging volume. The organization is distributed across multiple regions and time zones. The position is remote-friendly/hybrid with periodic travel.

Reports to: Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

What you’ll own

• Define and execute the engineering strategy in partnership with executive leadership.
• Lead and scale a large engineering org across software engineering, architecture, and QA.
• Own engineering operating planning: annual operating plan, budgeting, forecasting, and cost management (in partnership with Finance/R&D Ops).
• Drive hiring strategy and execution to meet growth targets and reduce ramp-up time.
• Build and maintain org mechanisms: org design, career ladders, performance management, development plans, and talent reviews.
• Establish a culture of continuous improvement across delivery efficiency, reliability, and product quality.
• Strengthen cross-team communication and alignment across time zones and functions; proactively resolve blockers and friction.
• Provide transparency on team health, delivery status, risks, and organizational needs through clear reporting and metrics.
• Identify and implement engineering best practices to close gaps and improve outcomes (quality, velocity, cost, stability).
• Define, document, and enforce engineering standards, processes, and governance.
• Ensure technical designs are consistently created, reviewed, and aligned to long-term architecture and security requirements.
• Maintain strong understanding of business goals, customer needs, and product/technology landscape to guide prioritization.
• Handle sensitive information with a high level of discretion and confidentiality.

Requirements (must be met)

• 15+ years of professional software engineering experience, with senior-level technical credibility.
• 10+ years leading software engineering teams and large-scale initiatives (Director/VP level or equivalent).
• Proven success leading distributed, multi-location engineering organizations across regions/time zones.
• Demonstrated track record building and scaling teams through hiring, onboarding, coaching, and retention.
• Experience operating within Enterprise B2B SaaS environments with high availability and reliability expectations.
• Strong ability to align stakeholders with differing priorities; capable of influencing across Product, Security/Operations, and Compliance.
• Comfortable giving and receiving candid feedback; able to navigate conflict and make tough decisions.
• Ability to balance short-term delivery needs with long-term technical strategy and architectural health.
• Clear communication skills in technical and non-technical settings; able to synthesize complex inputs into actionable plans.
• Strong organizational and analytical skills; effective at managing complex priorities and executing through ambiguity.
• Experience with modern engineering operating models (agile delivery, DevOps culture, quality practices, metrics-driven execution).

Preferred qualifications

• Experience leading engineering in platforms that operate at significant scale (high transaction volume, high throughput messaging, large customer base).
• Familiarity with modern cloud-native architectures and distributed systems.
• Experience working closely with finance partners on budgeting/forecasting and cost optimization.
• Experience improving product economics through engineering productivity, reliability, and platform efficiency initiatives.
• Background in strengthening engineering governance (standards, design reviews, security practices, SDLC controls).

Technical environment (example)

You’ll be comfortable guiding teams working across a modern stack that may include Ruby/Go/Python/TypeScript, data stores like MySQL, streaming/messaging such as Kafka, caching like Redis, and container orchestration like Kubernetes. Teams may leverage AI tooling to improve developer productivity and delivery outcomes.

Interview flow (example)

• Recruiter screen
• Hiring manager interview (video)
• Panel conversations with leadership and cross-functional partners (video; may be split into separate sessions)

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: $175,532.09-$356,608.55 per year

Work Location: Remote