VP – Engineering

VP, Engineering Overview:

If you are passionate about building world-class engineering teams and delivering exceptional products, we invite you to join us and help shape the future of K-12 technology. As the Vice President of Engineering, you will be a key leader responsible for driving the strategic direction, performance, and scalability of our engineering organization. Reporting directly to the CTO, you will oversee engineering operations, ensure technical excellence, and foster a high-performing engineering culture. You’ll lead the team through periods of growth and transformation, ensuring alignment between engineering and business objectives. You will play a pivotal role in guiding the company’s evolution from $50MM ARR to $200MM ARR by optimizing processes, adopting innovative technologies, and building a scalable team for the future.

VP, Engineering Responsibilities: 

Leadership and Strategy

• Define and execute the engineering vision, aligning with the company’s long-term strategic goals.
• Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing engineering leadership team, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and excellence.
• Partner with the CTO and executive leadership to prioritize investments in technology, people, and processes.
• Drive organizational design and team growth to support scaling while maintaining a focus on agility and innovation.
• Operational Excellence
• Establish and refine engineering processes to ensure efficient, predictable, and high-quality delivery.
• Champion DevOps best practices, emphasizing automation, CI/CD pipelines, and reliability engineering.
• Optimize engineering resource allocation to balance long-term innovation and short-term delivery.
• Oversee budgets and vendor relationships to ensure cost-effective technology investments.
• Technology and Innovation
• Provide technical leadership to ensure our SaaS platform remains scalable, secure, and performant.
• Collaborate with the Product team to deliver customer-centric solutions, balancing innovation with technical feasibility.
• Stay ahead of industry trends, ensuring the adoption of modern technologies and methodologies.
• Drive architectural decisions to support multi-tenant, cloud-native SaaS solutions that handle billions of API requests.
• Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement
• Act as a key liaison between engineering and other departments, ensuring alignment and effective communication.
• Represent engineering in board meetings and other executive-level discussions, communicating progress, challenges, and opportunities.
• Build relationships with customers and partners to understand their needs and incorporate feedback into engineering priorities.

Criteria for Success

• Proven track record of leading engineering teams in scaling SaaS companies from $50MM ARR to $200MM+ ARR.
• Deep expertise in building and scaling multi-tenant, cloud-native platforms with a focus on security, performance, and reliability.
• Strong understanding of modern DevOps practices, including CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and site reliability engineering (SRE).
• Exceptional ability to balance strategic vision with tactical execution, delivering value to customers and stakeholders.
• Demonstrated success in recruiting, retaining, and developing top engineering talent.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• A customer-first mindset, ensuring engineering efforts prioritize delivering exceptional value to users.

Personality

• Visionary and forward-thinking, capable of navigating the challenges of a high-growth SaaS company.
• Collaborative and approachable, with a low-ego leadership style that fosters team success.
• Resilient and calm under pressure, with a focus on problem-solving and continuous improvement.
• Data-driven and analytical, using metrics to inform decisions and track progress.
• Passionate about technology and innovation, with a hands-on approach when needed.
• Takes full ownership of tasks, delivering high-quality results with minimal oversight or hand-holding.
• Inquisitive and eager to learn, consistently seeks to understand all aspects of the system, technology, and business to make informed and well-rounded decisions.

VP, Engineering Requirements:

• Platform: Microsoft Azure, C#.NET 8.0
• Architecture: Microservices, Multi-tenant, Event-Driven Architecture
• Design Patterns: Dependency Injection, Repository Pattern, Factory Pattern, Singleton, Event-Driven Architecture, SOLID, CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation), and Circuit Breaker for fault tolerance
• Process: Agile methodologies, DevOps, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code
• Leadership: 10+ years in engineering leadership roles, with a proven ability to scale teams and deliver results
• Experience scaling operations, navigating ambiguity, and implementing transformational changes
• Ability set the long-term vision and make critical trade-offs that impact the company’s trajectory
• While technical expertise is essential, this role requires a balance of technical leadership and organizational management
• Experience navigating a wide range of technical, operational, and strategic areas
• Experience with a rapidly growing company, having to embrace and lead through constant change
• Expertise in making tough calls, resolving conflicts, and driving alignment across diverse teams and stakeholders