Senior Director, Engineering

Job Description Summary:

The Senior Director of Technology is accountable for the technical leadership, engineering strategy, and delivery excellence of a portfolio of product teams operating under a modern Product Operating Model. This role manages a group of Tech Leads embedded within durable, cross-functional product teams and ensures technology decisions accelerate customer outcomes, business results, and long-term platform health.
This leader is a multiplier, raising the technical bar, improving decision quality, and enabling teams to move fast without sacrificing quality, security, or scalability.
Core Accountabilities`

Product Model Leadership
•    Partner with Product and Design leadership to co-own outcomes, not output.
•    Ensure Tech Leads actively contribute to product discovery, feasibility assessment, and rapid experimentation.
•    Translate product strategy into cohesive technical direction across teams.

Technical Strategy & Architecture
•    Own the technical vision and architecture guardrails for the product portfolio.
•    Balance near-term delivery with long-term platform sustainability.
•    Drive architectural consistency while enabling team-level autonomy.
•    Make explicit trade-offs across speed, cost, risk, and scalability.

Engineering Execution
•    Ensure teams consistently deliver reliable, secure, and high-quality software.
•    Establish and enforce engineering standards (CI/CD, testing, observability, security, resilience).
•    Remove systemic impediments to flow and throughput.
•    Use data to continuously improve delivery performance (cycle time, reliability, defects, availability).

Tech Lead Management & Development
•    Directly manage and develop a cohort of Tech Leads.
•    Set clear expectations for technical leadership, decision-making, and collaboration.
•    Coach Tech Leads to operate as strong partners to Product Managers and Designers.
•    Build bench strength through mentoring, succession planning, and targeted growth plans.

Organizational & Cross-Enterprise Influence
•    Serve as a senior technology voice with peers in Product, Architecture, Security, Data, and Operations.
•    Influence funding, sequencing, and prioritization through evidence-based recommendations.
•    Ensure compliance with enterprise risk, security, and regulatory requirements without slowing teams unnecessarily.

Business Partnership & Executive Communication
•    Act as a primary technology partner to business leadership, translating business strategy, customer needs, and market dynamics into clear technical direction and delivery plans.
•    Build and sustain trusted relationships with senior business stakeholders by communicating progress, trade-offs, risks, and investment decisions in clear, outcome-focused language.
•    Ensure Tech Leads are effective communicators who can explain technical decisions in business terms and engage confidently with non-technical audiences.
•    Represent technology with external customers, partners, and vendors, articulating product capabilities, roadmap intent, architectural posture, and delivery commitments with credibility and clarity.
•    Proactively surface and frame technology constraints, dependencies, and risks early, enabling informed business decisions rather than late surprises.
•    Drive alignment across Product, Engineering, and Business teams by ensuring shared understanding of goals, success measures, and value realization.

Success Measures
•    Product teams consistently achieve customer and business outcomes.
•    Improved engineering throughput and predictability.
•    Reduced technical risk and unplanned work.
•    Strong Tech Lead engagement, retention, and readiness for broader leadership.
•    Platforms that scale with the business and reduce the marginal cost of delivery.

Leadership Profile 
•    Outcome-oriented, not feature-driven
•    Strong technical taste and decision clarity
•    Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid learning
•    Coaches leaders rather than directing tasks
•    Holds teams accountable while creating psychological safety

Required Experience & Capabilities
•    Bachelor’s degree preferably in computer science or related field or equivalent work experience in the Product Operating Model.
•    Prefer 8+ years experience leading a Product technology team
•    Proven success leading product teams in continuous discovery and delivery.
•    Strong system design and architecture expertise in modern cloud-native environments.
•    Deep understanding of DevOps, SRE, and secure-by-design principles.
•    Demonstrated ability to coach senior engineers and scale teams.