Engineering Director

ABOUT BESTOW

Bestow is a leading insurance technology platform serving some of the world's largest and most innovative life insurers. We are on a mission to increase financial stability for everyone. Bestow is a team of mission-driven, results-oriented individuals. We offer all employees a remote (contiguous 48 only)/hybrid workplace, meaningful benefits, substantial growth opportunities, and equity.

Bestow participates in the E-Verify Program.

ABOUT THE TEAM

The Engineering team is the core of Bestow, driving all technology for our innovative SaaS platform that empowers insurance carriers. We build and maintain solutions that serve our employees, consumers, and enterprise customers throughout the entire lifecycle of a life insurance policy. This includes developing robust backend services, integrating and managing essential third-party products, and creating tools that enhance efficiency and accuracy across our operations. Our major functional teams include Product Engineering, Infrastructure, IT, Data & Analytics, and Technical Program Management. Engineering collaborates closely with Product Management and Design to define and prioritize the product roadmap, ensuring our technical vision aligns with business objectives.

As the Director of Engineering, you will provide strategic leadership and technical guidance to Backend Engineering Teams. These teams are responsible for developing and operating critical services that underpin the entire lifecycle of a life insurance policy. This includes building services that manage data to power the businesses of our carrier partners, developing tools for various operational needs, and architecting foundational services that enable our product teams to scale Bestow’s output. Our systems are built using a modern microservices architecture, primarily leveraging Golang and PostgreSQL, and integrate using gRPC, REST, and asynchronous messaging patterns. We deploy and operate our workloads on Kubernetes within Google Cloud Platform, and you will be instrumental in ensuring the reliability, scalability, and performance of these critical systems.

This role is open to remote candidates and reports to the VP of Engineering. 

WHO YOU ARE

You are a highly technical, strategic, and results-oriented engineering leader who thrives in a fast-paced, high-growth environment. You possess a deep understanding of backend systems, distributed architectures, and modern software development practices. You are passionate about building and mentoring high-performing engineering teams, fostering a culture of technical excellence, and driving significant impact on a sophisticated SaaS platform. You have a strong technical foundation and can effectively guide teams to build scalable, secure, and maintainable solutions.

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience required.

• 10+ years of professional software development experience with a strong focus on backend technologies.

• 5+ years of progressive engineering management experience, with a proven track record of leading and scaling multiple backend engineering teams or team leads.

• Experience with managing managers 

• Deep expertise in the entire software development lifecycle, from inception and design to deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement, including CI/CD practices.

• Significant understanding of Golang (Go) and a strong understanding of its best practices.

• Proven ability to design, build, and operate distributed systems and microservices architectures at scale.

• Extensive experience with relational databases, particularly PostgreSQL.

• Strong understanding of API design principles (Protocol Buffers, Swagger/OpenAPI)

• Solid understanding of containerization technologies; Docker and Kubernetes.

• Advocate for test-driven development (TDD).

• Experience with cloud computing platforms and a preference for Google Cloud Platform. 

• Proven ability to attract, hire, mentor, and retain top-tier engineering talent.

• Excellent communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills.

• A strong advocate for automation testing.

• Ability to understand complex business requirements and translate them into effective technical solutions.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Strategic Technical Leadership:

• Define and drive the technical vision and strategy for multiple backend engineering teams, ensuring alignment with Bestow's overall technology roadmap and business objectives.

• Lead cross-vertical initiatives where you have to make an impa