Director of Engineering

Compass•Boston, NY

19d

About The Position

Compass is seeking an experienced Director of Engineering to lead engineering for its brands’ consumer websites and apps. The role leads a distributed, multi-team organization across the U.S. and internationally, delivering distinct brand experiences on shared platforms. Its scope includes home search and consumer experiences across compass.com, brand web and mobile platforms, international sites, and growth initiatives such as SEO, conversion, and lead capture. Reporting to the VP of Software Engineering, this leader partners with executive leadership across Product, Design, and the brands to set strategy and shape the organization that delivers it. The Director sets multi-year technical direction, builds and develops managers and senior engineers, plans succession, and steers organizational structure and investment. The role also owns engineering standards, operational response, spending across cloud, vendors, contractors, technical debt, and KTLO, and evaluation of emerging technology, including AI. Compass describes a technology landscape including TypeScript and React, Node.js, Java, Go, Python, headless content management, and cloud-native, containerized infrastructure on AWS. The Director will guide brand websites toward shared modern foundations and help advance AI in consumer experiences and engineering workflows.

Requirements

10+ years of engineering leadership, including 6+ years leading managers.
Track record of building distributed organizations that deliver without the leader needing to be present in the room.
12+ years in software engineering, with deep expertise in modern web and mobile architecture for consumer products used by millions.
Proven record of improving consumer growth metrics such as organic traffic, conversion, and engagement through technical SEO at scale, high performance, AI-powered search visibility, and high-velocity experimentation.
Experience building shared platforms and design systems for multiple brands or markets, including international launches.
High standards for reliability, web performance, and accessibility, with operational rigor to hold an organization to them.
Experience shipping AI-powered consumer experiences and using AI to make engineering teams faster.
Ability to translate technical strategy into business outcomes for executives and to manage budgets, vendors, and delivery partners with discipline.
Ability and willingness to hire and develop leaders, make talent decisions fairly and with emotional intelligence, and develop people.

Nice To Haves

Experience in real estate, marketplaces, or multi-brand consumer businesses.

Responsibilities

Set the multi-year engineering vision and technical strategy for brand websites and apps with Product, Design, and brand leaders, and own the investment case with executive leadership.
Improve consumer acquisition and engagement by designing pages around consumer needs, connecting visitors with agents, and using data and experimentation to evaluate results.
Shape a shared platform strategy that supports nine distinct brands and consumers across 120 countries and territories.
Set organization-wide standards for quality, reliability, and performance; hold managers accountable and own the organization’s response to incidents and failures.
Manage organizational spending across cloud, vendors, contractors, technical debt, and KTLO; make investment tradeoffs and hold delivery partners to team standards.
Define how the organization evaluates emerging technology and sponsor worthwhile initiatives, including AI in consumer experiences and engineering workflows.
Hire and develop managers and senior engineers, shape team structures, plan succession, and foster ownership, trust, and continuous improvement.
Align leaders across Product, Design, Marketing, brands, and peer engineering teams, including when priorities compete.
Guide the move of brand websites onto shared, modern foundations.
Advance consumer growth through technical SEO, performance, AI-powered search visibility, and experimentation.