Director, Software Engineering

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Director, Software Engineering based in the United States.

As Director of Software Engineering, you will shape the technical foundations, engineering practices, and security strategy behind a growing education technology platform. Working across eight product squads, you will identify and prioritize complex technical initiatives that require coordination beyond individual teams, including platform modernization, authentication, dependency management, and security. You will lead and develop a team of Staff Engineers, empowering them to drive meaningful improvements across the engineering organization. A central part of your role will be strengthening application and cloud security while coordinating standards, reporting, and compliance with a centralized security organization. Partnering closely with senior R&D leaders, you will influence technical priorities, balance business needs against engineering risks, and ensure critical initiatives move forward. This is a highly autonomous leadership opportunity where your decisions will have a direct impact on product quality, engineering velocity, and organizational resilience.

Accountabilities

You will provide technical leadership across the engineering organization, taking ownership of cross-functional initiatives, developing senior technical talent, and ensuring security practices are embedded into the software development lifecycle.

• Cross-Organizational Technical Strategy

• Identify and prioritize technical challenges that span multiple product squads, including platform modernization, authentication, dependency health, and security.

• Work with Staff Engineers to define problems, establish scope and timelines, assess technical risks, and prepare initiatives for execution.

• Present recommendations and business cases to R&D leadership, explaining the urgency, expected impact, and trade-offs of proposed initiatives.

• Participate in engineering prioritization decisions, helping determine which initiatives should be addressed in each development cycle.

• Support teams in making sound technical decisions and delivering cross-functional improvements within their existing capacity.

• Staff Engineering Leadership and Development

• Build, lead, and expand the Staff Engineer team through strategic hiring and professional development.

• Establish team direction and allocate engineering resources according to organizational priorities.

• Coach Staff Engineers in navigating ambiguous technical challenges, building alignment across teams, and documenting important decisions.

• Help senior technical contributors develop their influence and effectiveness across the engineering organization.

• Evaluate complex technical trade-offs and take accountability for the decisions and recommendations made by your team.

• Security Strategy and Engineering Practices

• Lead security practices across the engineering organization, translating centralized security standards into actionable internal processes.

• Establish clear ownership and escalation procedures for security responsibilities within engineering.

• Integrate security findings into existing development tools and workflows so engineers can understand and address issues efficiently.

• Incorporate security considerations, including threat modeling, into technical planning and project design.

• Coordinate security activities such as incident response, vendor and third-party risk management, security awareness, district security questionnaires, and penetration testing.

• Oversee compliance evidence and coordinate contributions from engineering and product teams.

• Centralized Security Partnership

• Own the relationship with the parent organization's central security team, building an understanding of its governance and decision-making processes.

• Collaborate on security standards, service-level agreements (SLAs), and key performance indicators (KPIs), ensuring they are appropriate for the engineering environment.

• Influence how centralized security requirements apply to the organization and recommend adjustments where existing approaches do not align with development practices.

• Partner with security teams to ensure scanning tools are correctly scoped and configured for the organization's repositories and technology stack.

• Reconcile internal security reporting with centralized reporting to maintain consistent and reliable metrics.

• Provide weekly updates on remediation progress, blockers, and security KPIs.

• Represent the engineering organization in security forums and translate relevant decisions into actionable internal priorities.

Requirements

The ideal candidate is an experienced software engineering leader with strong technical foundations, substantial security expertise, and the ability to drive complex initiatives across teams without relying on direct…