Vice President of Engineering

Confidential Company is seeking a Vice President of Engineering to bridge the gap between business strategy and technical execution. The role involves optimizing the Software Development Life Cycle, establishing operational metrics, and architecting the engineering organization for maximum autonomy.

Responsibilities:

• Standardize and optimize the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
• Own the 'definition of done,' ensuring that velocity is balanced with rigorous automated testing and CI/CD maturity
• Establish and track core operational metrics—such as DORA metrics (Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, MTTR, and Change Failure Rate)—to identify bottlenecks and drive continuous improvement
• Architect the engineering org for maximum autonomy, including defining squad structures and clarifying reporting lines
• Manage the technical balance sheet and implement a formal process for prioritizing 'keep-the-lights-on' (KTLO) work and security patches against new feature development
• Oversee the engineering budget, including cloud infrastructure costs and third-party vendor management, to ensure high ROI on engineering spend
• Own the operational reliability of the platform and oversee the evolution of SRE practices, incident management protocols, and post-mortem cultures to ensure 99.9%+ uptime
• Solve high-stakes challenges at the intersection of scale, security, and speed

Requirements:

• Bridge the gap between business strategy and technical execution
• Standardize and optimize the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
• Own the 'definition of done,' ensuring that velocity is balanced with rigorous automated testing and CI/CD maturity
• Establish and track core operational metrics—such as DORA metrics (Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, MTTR, and Change Failure Rate)—to identify bottlenecks and drive continuous improvement
• Architect the engineering org for maximum autonomy
• Define squad structures (e.g., 'Two-Pizza Teams'), clarify reporting lines, and manage the transition from a monolithic team to a distributed service-oriented structure
• Manage the technical balance sheet
• Implement a formal process for prioritizing 'keep-the-lights-on' (KTLO) work and security patches against new feature development to ensure long-term system health
• Oversee the engineering budget, including cloud infrastructure costs (AWS/Azure/GCP optimization), third-party vendor management, and headcount planning to ensure high ROI on engineering spend
• Own the operational reliability of our platform
• Oversee the evolution of our SRE practices, incident management protocols, and post-mortem cultures to ensure 99.9%+ uptime
• Hold your own in a deep-dive architecture review and have a strong intuition for technical debt trade-offs
• Solve high-stakes challenges at the intersection of scale, security, and speed