Director of Engineering

Are you inspired by inventions? Is problem-solving through teamwork in your DNA? At Submittable we build software that enables our customers to drive positive social change around the globe. As our Engineering team continues to grow, we are looking for our next Director of Engineering!

As the Director of Engineering, you will play a pivotal role in driving the development and execution of our engineering strategy while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and excellence. You will collaborate closely with our Program Management, Science, and Product Management teams to drive the roadmap, prioritize development, ensure successful delivery of high-quality software solutions, and drive our engineering continuous improvement practices.

We are looking for a people-first leader to oversee our existing Infrastructure and Development Experience (DevEx) teams at Submittable. You will manage Submittable’s multi-cloud infrastructure between AWS and Azure, 3P services, international expansion, data residency, and cloud fundamentals for privacy, security, compliance, and foundations. This team enables our internal engineering teams to move faster, and intentionally within the constraints of a complex, multi-cloud, highly compliant infrastructure.

We prefer off-the-shelf infrastructure solutions over bespoke in-house solutions. Our ideal candidate will have experience scaling internal developer platforms based on the following technologies:

• Kubernetes - Container orchestration and self-service compute
• Kafka - Streaming and Eventing
• Azure ML Studio
• ArgoCD - Continuous deployment.
• Crossplane and/or Terraform - Infrastructure as code and the practice of creating reproducible and ephemeral environments.
• Backstage - Software catalog, scaffolds, and templates.
• GitHub Actions - Continuous integration.
• Monitoring tools like SigNoz, Datadog, or Prometheus/Grafana.
• Familiarity with CNCF solutions outside of well-known projects like Kubernetes and Prometheus.

As a senior technical leader, you'll continuously improve our operational excellence, enabling and supporting our continued, rapid business growth. At the core of this position is leadership and mentoring our teams. You must have a strong working knowledge of technology and thrive in a fast-paced, constantly evolving, dynamic environment. Qualified candidates should have experience in managing high-performing individuals, building engineering roadmaps, and collaborating across diverse groups.

If you are ready for a new adventure at a growing SaaS startup, we would love to hear from you. This role is part of our engineering org and reports to our Vice President of Engineer. Or engineering offices are located in Bellevue, WA, and Missoula, MT following a hybrid office model.

What You’ll be Doing:

• You will be responsible for working collaboratively with other cross-functional teams and leaders to bring together a suite of core platform products.
• Responsible for thinking about the team from both a platform mindset as well as a product-oriented mindset.
• Capable of driving the development of products and platforms in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Foster and grow the next generation of leadership and management talent across the company.
• Create a positive and rewarding working environment for the team.
• Technical Leadership: Drive the vision and strategy for our enterprise cloud systems, infrastructure & and collaboration applications, ensuring efficient performance, security, and compliance.
• Multi-functional Collaboration: Work closely with PMO, Product, Science, and other engineering teams to align strategies and ensure cohesive product development keeping Employee experience in mind.
• Communication: Communicate sophisticated technical information to both technical and non-technical collaborators clearly and concisely.
• Help implement automated tests, automated deployments, monitoring, and operational tools along with true observability with experience in device lifecycle, collaboration application & and overall developer efficiency.
• Apply engineering leadership and deep knowledge of infrastructure and software development at scale to lead these services' operation, adoption, and evolution.
• Develop and maintain a roadmap of scheduled projects, throughout the entire lifecycle from intake to deployment. Drive prioritization within the organization by establishing strategic planning and governance principles and processes
• Define key metrics and implement reporting mechanisms to deliver insights, hold leaders accountable, and drive strategic alignment. Define best practices and governance frameworks for enablement tools and the processes surrounding those tools
• Actively support and foster a culture of inclusion and belonging.

Our Stack Includes:

• .NET core
• Postgres
• SQL
• ComosDB
• OpenAI
• Docker
• K8
• Kafka
• Auth0

How You’ll Make an Impact; Skills & Experience You Bring:

• 10+ years of relevant industry experience in software engineering
• 8+ years of people management experience
• 5+ years of hands-on experience designing highly functional and scalable distributed systems
• Experience with Azure, AWS, and or GCP
• A passion for the SaaS business model driven by a vibrant ecosystem, and very strong stakeholder management skills
• Experience with international expansion, global load balancing, BC/DR, sovereignty and data compliance
• Operational experience at scale - crafting and operating highly available, scalable, and fault-tolerant systems using best-of-breed technologies like containers, APIs, Data platforms, & AI
• Exceptional critical thinking and analytical skills, possessing the ability to quickly understand complex systems and their associated data.
• Experience designing, contributing to, and consuming modern APIs to deliver rich experiences
• Experience working within environments heavily focused on TDD, automation, and DevSecOps concepts to rapidly deliver, measure, and iterate on products and features
• Exceptional communication and collaboration skills
• Experience hiring and mentoring Engineering Managers
• Experience working with executives to align technical goals with business goals

Salary Details: The annual salary range for this position is $250,000-$300,000. Actual compensation is based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience. We also have a location-based compensation structure; there may be a different range for candidates in other locations.

Position Location: This role will be located in Bellevue, WA, or, Missoula, MT following a hybrid work model. Employees are expected to be willing to work from one of our office locations twice a week or as needed by your team.