Director, Engineering

About Betterment

Betterment is a leading, technology-driven financial services company that offers investing and retirement solutions for retail investors and investment advisors as well as financial wellness solutions, including a 401(k) for small and medium-sized businesses. Our team is passionate about our mission: making people’s lives better. We’re headquartered in NYC and offer hybrid NY-based positions (three days/ week in-office).

About the role

As director of our App Platform organization within Platform Engineering, you will lead the Web Platform and Mobile Platform teams responsible for enabling product engineering teams across Betterment to deliver a delightful, modern, performant user experience for Betterment customers. You will ensure their success by establishing a coherent technical vision and working directly with eng leadership (Principal Engineers & Directors) to drive the technical direction of our app platform. The ideal candidate has a strong background in building and leading platform teams that accelerate product teams’ delivery by driving adoption of platform improvements that simultaneously improve both the developer experience and the user experience.

You will join us at an exciting time as we continue to scale our platform capabilities to support Betterment's growth and innovation.

This role is based out of our NYC office. Below we've reflected the base salary range we would offer for this position. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Betterment’s total compensation package for employees. 

• New York City: $230000 - $260000

We offer a competitive equity package, health, dental and vision benefits, life and AD&D, short-term and long-term disability insurance, EAP, commuter and parking benefits FSA/HSA, and 401(k) with employer match as well as a flexible PTO policy. This job may also be eligible for variable compensation in the form of a company incentive bonus.  For jobs based out of our NYC HQ, we require in office attendance Tuesday through Thursday, weekly.

A day in the life

• Lead and grow a high-impact organization responsible for web and mobile application platforms that serve engineering teams across Betterment
• Manage and mentor Engineering Managers and senior Individual Contributors, fostering their growth into independent leaders who can operate effectively within your organization and beyond
• Partner with Product leadership and engineering stakeholders to ensure your organization's strategy and priorities align with company objectives, advocating for platform investments that drive both developer productivity and customer value
• Hold your organization accountable to operational excellence through appropriate metrics (SLOs) while fostering a culture of continuous improvement and technical innovation
• Build and maintain strong relationships with engineering teams across the organization, understanding their needs and ensuring platform solutions accelerate their delivery of customer value
• Champion major initiatives that improve developer experience, code quality, and consistency across Betterment's web and mobile applications
• Translate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and business context to engineers, serving as a bridge between platform capabilities and business outcomes
• Establish and improve internal frameworks to deliver delightful, modern, performant user experiences while maintaining high development velocity

What we’re looking for

• A proven track record of leading platform engineering teams whose work impacts multiple product teams and improves development workflows across an organization.
• Experience managing Engineering Managers and mentoring senior Individual Contributors at the Staff Engineer level
• Technical expertise in web and mobile platform technologies (React, React Native, Flutter, GraphQL, etc.) with the ability to guide architectural decisions and advocate for technical improvements
• Experience partnering with Product leadership and cross-functional stakeholders to align platform investments with business priorities and customer needs
• Strong collaboration skills with the ability to build trust across engineering teams and influence adoption of platform improvements through an InnerSource model
• Experience defining and implementing operational metrics that drive both engineering productivity and product roadmap delivery
• The ability to champion organization-wide initiatives related to developer experience, engineering standards, and technical exc