Director of sw engineering

About the Role

We are looking for a self-driven, strategic, and collaborative leader to serve as the Director/VP of Software. As the CTO’s right hand, you will own product development across the full stack—from the Go back-end and Rust parsing layer to the Vue/TypeScript front-end. This is a genuine hands-on role; you are expected to operate as an individual contributor approximately 40% of the time, participating in code reviews, subbing in for engineers, and driving architecture discussions.

The Company and Traction

We are the "GitHub for hardware engineers," bringing software-style workflows to electronics development. Funding & Growth: Recently raised $25M in total funding (Series A) and is rapidly scaling the organization. Market Traction: Already serving major customers including Meta, Cisco, Bose, and Merck.

The Team

A high-caliber team of 30 employees, with plans to double the engineering team by year-end.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Architecture

Own the product development roadmap in partnership with the CTO and Product Management. Translate business goals and customer needs into clear technical plans. Balance speed, scalability, and technical quality through strategic build-vs-buy decisions.

People Management & Team Building

Oversee and mentor ~5 technical team leads, fostering a culture of ownership. Manage the hiring, development, and retention of engineering talent as the org scales. Create growth paths for both individual contributors and managers.

Hands-on Engineering (40% of time)

Engage in code reviews, prototyping, and debugging complex problems. Drive end-to-end web performance analysis (e.g., rendering complex CAD documents with 100k+ elements). Lead the development of specialized projects like a 3D rendering engine for PCBs.

Candidate Requirements

Experience: 8+ years in software engineering with 3+ years managing engineering teams. Leadership: Ideally has experience leading organizations of 15+ engineers total. Tech Stack: Deep experience with Go, Rust, and Vue/TypeScript. Startup DNA: Experience at a growth-stage startup (Series A–B) is preferred over exclusive enterprise backgrounds. Education: Bachelor’s degree or higher in C.S. or an equivalent technical field. Domain Knowledge: Background in DevOps, developer infra, or hardware-adjacent domains (IoT/Embedded) is a plus. Citizenship: US/Canada residency and authorization required; US citizenship is a plus due to ITAR-regulated customers.

Tech Stack Languages: Go, Rust, TypeScript. Front-end: Vue, SVG, CSS Selectors. Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, CI/CD pipelines.