Director of Engineering

Rare Days

3d • $190,000 - $240,000 • Remote

About The Position

Rare Days is a digital product studio that partners with category-defining companies to build, design, and launch new products, or to improve existing ones. They also embed with internal teams to help them scale. The company emphasizes deep understanding of partner goals and end-user needs to create intentional experiences, prioritizing technical and design excellence. For six years, Rare Days has collaborated with influential creators to build world-class products, bringing the same rigor to all engagements. The team is fully remote and based in Canada, open to candidates within 4 hours of PST, with a preference for Canadian applicants.

Requirements

• 12+ years in software development, including 5+ years in engineering leadership, with a track record of guiding multiple teams through the end-to-end digital product lifecycle
• Leadership experience in both agency/studio and enterprise or product-company settings, or clear evidence you can operate in the one you haven't done
• Enough current technical depth to be assigned to a project and be useful on day one: you can guide the build, make the high-level calls, and go deep on a hairy problem when it matters, without needing to be a contributor. You won't be building this work, but you need real experience in it, an expert-level grasp of software development patterns, and opinions on industry best practices
• Backend production experience in modern languages and infrastructure (e.g. Python, Java, Node, Go, AWS, GCP, Vercel)
• Frontend experience in modern frameworks (e.g. React, React Native, Vue), with a strong eye for design quality and accessibility
• Hands-on with AI-led development environments (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, Codex), and able to set the standard for how a team uses them well and safely
• API design and development, data modelling, and database architecture for large scale platform builds
• Infrastructure depth across messaging, events, microservices, scaling, and security hardening
• A track record of delivering complex engineering work inside large, product-led client organizations, navigating stakeholders with conflicting priorities without letting delivery slip
• You've specified, written, reviewed and negotiated statements of work (SOW) and scope definitions before, and can estimate new work credibly
• You've been close to the sales process before: scoping new work, contributing to proposals, and growing revenue on accounts you already held
• You communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences, and can present to company leadership with credibility, clarity, and confidence
• You've built and shipped several products and/or complex design systems to market in the past two years
• Able to build a POC quickly to validate an idea or a direction
• Resourceful about your own time. You can tell where your hours are best spent as that shifts week to week, and you protect the technical core of the role without dropping the management side
• A passion for developing talent, motivating teams, and guiding engineers toward successful careers

Nice To Haves

• Experience inside big tech or on enterprise-scale accounts
• Experience leading remote, nearshore, or globally distributed teams across development, product, and QA
• Experience building creator platforms, membership tools, media tools, or community-driven products
• Shipping native mobile first products to market

Responsibilities

• Technical leadership on the projects you carry
• Ensure sound architecture across your teams, arbitrating major technical decisions with Leads and Staff engineers and guiding project team members
• Take guidance from your senior engineers on tooling, vendor, and infrastructure choices, and be accountable for the final calls, including cost and reliability outcomes
• Hold the bar on security, quality, and performance standards across your teams, and own your teams' response posture
• Drive AI-first adoption across your teams, making sure it's used well and safely, and set the expectation and example for what good looks like
• Drive the overall Engineering org's operations and strategy, from day to day processes to long-term direction
• Stay accountable for keeping the projects and teams on your accounts on track, raising a flag early when they aren't. This isn't a project-management role, but you own the outcome
• Contribute to resourcing and project allocation decisions, forecasting future needs against the client roadmaps and driving the hiring that fills the gaps
• Partner with the Client Partnerships team to pitch and scope engagements, and write and review the SOWs that come out of them
• Build strong relationships with client project leaders, and hold your own with senior client stakeholders (VPs, directors, principals)
• Act as the point of escalation for engineering matters on the accounts you hold
• Spot opportunities to grow the accounts you hold, make the case for new work internally and with the client, and support the proposals that follow
• Manage and grow engineers, Leads, and Tech Managers, who won't always sit on the same project teams they report to you from
• Own performance management for your reports: hiring, evaluation, direct and constructive feedback, and careers
• Foster an open, collaborative, and inclusive environment for the engineering team

Benefits

• Generous paid time off for vacation, sick days, and personal time as needed. We actively encourage team members to make use of this time-off policy
• Flexible working hours and remote-friendly culture
• Extended health care benefits for Canadian employees
• Competitive compensation

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed