Director, Engineering at Applause

United States

<p>We're seeking an experienced Director of Engineering to join our leadership team and report directly to our Co-Founder/CTO, Scott Rogers. This is a critical management-focused role where you'll lead our entire development team, recruit and ramp new engineers, and scale processes in order to help take the department to the next level.</p><p></p><p>Responsibilities:</p><ul><li>Team Leadership &amp; Development </li><ul><li>Lead, mentor, and grow the engineering team across all functions (backend, frontend, mobile, DevOps, QA)</li><li>Recruit, onboard, and retain exceptional engineering talent </li><li>Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, ownership, and continuous improvement</li><li>Conduct regular 1-on-1s, performance reviews, and provide coaching to develop future leaders</li></ul><li>Product Development &amp; Execution</li><ul><li>Partner closely with Product leadership to translate the product roadmap into engineering deliverables</li><li>Own sprint planning, resource allocation, and delivery timelines across all engineering initiatives</li><li>Ensure predictable, reliable product releases with minimal bugs and strong quality assurance</li><li>Drive alignment between engineering capacity and product priorities</li></ul><li>Engineering Excellence &amp; Quality </li><ul><li>Establish and enforce code quality standards, testing practices, and peer review processes</li><li>Implement CI/CD pipelines and development workflows that enable rapid, safe deployments</li><li>Build quality assurance processes, including automated testing, code coverage, and monitoring</li><li>Create technical documentation standards and knowledge-sharing practices</li><li>Foster engineering best practices around system design, security, and performance optimization</li></ul><li>Technical Strategy &amp; Operations</li><ul><li>Collaborate with Lead Developer on technical vision and long-term technology strategy</li><li>Make build vs. buy decisions and evaluate new technologies, frameworks, and tools</li><li>Oversee infrastructure planning, capacity management, and cloud optimization</li><li>Ensure system reliability, uptime, and performance meet SLA commitments</li><li>Manage engineering budget and resource planning</li><li>Implement metrics and KPIs to measure team productivity, quality, and velocity</li></ul></ul> <p>Qualifications:</p><ul><li>8+ years in software engineering with 3+ years in engineering leadership roles (Manager or Director level)</li><li>Proven track record of scaling engineering teams from 5-10 to 20-50+ engineers</li><li>Experience managing managers and building organizational structures</li><li>Demonstrated success delivering complex SaaS products in fast-paced startup environments</li><li>Strong background in modern web app development and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)</li><li>Experience implementing engineering processes, standards, and best practices from the ground up</li><li>Track record of successful collaboration with Product teams to execute roadmaps</li><li>Detail-oriented with strong problem-solving abilities </li><li>Very effective in a remote work environment</li></ul><p></p><p>Preferred Qualifications:</p><ul><li>Previous experience at a Series A or Series B SaaS company during hypergrowth (2-5x growth)</li><li>Hands-on technical background with the ability to review architecture and code when needed</li><li>Experience with modern tech stacks (React, Node.js, Python, Go, microservices, etc.)</li><li>Experience with distributed teams or remote-first engineering cultures</li><li>History of successful technical hiring and building talent pipelines</li></ul> <p>Benefits:  100% remote w/ no office mandate | Unlimited PTO | 22 official company holidays | Health care | Life insurance | Stock options | Amazing colleagues | Energetic culture that is positive and celebrates together | Inspiring mission &amp; software product | Ability to grow your career by being early in a fast-growing tech startup</p>