Director of Software Engineering

Client Overview

Our client is one of the fastest-growing direct-to-consumer lifestyle brands in the U.S., known for blending mental wellness, inclusivity, and elevated comfort into every product and customer experience. More than just an apparel company, they are building a community-driven brand where authenticity and human connection are at the center of how they operate.

As the company scales rapidly, they are investing heavily in technology and engineering excellence to support a world-class Shopify-based eCommerce experience.

Role Overview

The Head of Engineering will lead the technical organization and drive the evolution of the company’s eCommerce and digital platform ecosystem. This leader will be responsible for shaping the engineering vision, scaling multiple technical teams, overseeing the development of new features, ensuring infrastructure stability, and enabling innovation across the business.

The ideal candidate brings a strong background in Shopify, DTC eCommerce, and modern web architectures, combined with proven engineering leadership experience. This person will play a critical role in guiding strategy, improving operational rigor, and building a high-performance engineering organization capable of supporting $1B+ scale.

Responsibilities

Leadership & Strategy

• Lead, mentor, and develop multi-disciplinary engineering teams (backend, frontend, full-stack, DevOps, QA).
• Define and execute the engineering strategy aligned with product priorities and business objectives.
• Collaborate closely with Product and Design to plan initiatives, set milestones, and ensure on-time delivery.
• Foster a culture of ownership, transparency, and continuous improvement.
• Oversee headcount planning, hiring, team structure, and resource allocation to support rapid growth.

Technical Excellence

• Set and enforce high standards for system architecture, code quality, testing, and deployment.
• Champion modern engineering practices including CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure-as-code, and observability.
• Evaluate and implement technologies that support scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Collaborate with architects and senior engineers to evolve the company’s core platform and services.
• Deep hands-on experience with:
• Node.js, modern JavaScript (ES6+), and Shopify’s Liquid
• Headless commerce setups
• Backend services in Node.js or Python
• API development, asynchronous programming, microservices
• Guide teams in writing clean, maintainable, testable code.
• Architect and maintain cloud-native, scalable services and RESTful APIs using frameworks such as Typescript, Express.js, FastAPI, or Flask.

Delivery & Operations

• Oversee the entire software development lifecycle: ideation → design → implementation → testing → deployment → monitoring.
• Establish engineering KPIs around velocity, code quality, reliability, and delivery performance.
• Partner with Infrastructure, Security, and DevOps teams to ensure uptime, scalability, and security compliance.
• Manage technical debt and long-term platform stability through refactoring and architecture improvements.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with stakeholders across Product, IT, Operations, Marketing, and Leadership to ensure engineering initiatives deliver measurable business value.
• Represent Engineering in executive discussions and support company-wide strategic planning.
• Communicate complex technical strategies clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 5+ years in engineering leadership or management, guiding multi-team organizations or large-scale initiatives.
• Strong technical expertise in:
• Cloud-native development (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Microservices and distributed systems
• Web and mobile application frameworks
• API design, data flows, and systems integration
• Experience with Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban) and DevOps principles.
• Exceptional communication, leadership, and collaboration skills.
• Demonstrated success scaling engineering teams in high-growth environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience scaling organizations from startup → mid-stage → enterprise-level maturity.
• Exposure to security and compliance standards such as SOC 2, GDPR, PCI.
• Track record of building diverse, equitable, and inclusive engineering teams.