Director of Engineering

Step

49d•Remote

About The Position

Step is looking for an experienced Director of Engineering to lead and grow our engineering organization as we enter our next phase of scale. You'll work closely with the CTO and leaders across Product, Design, Operations, Risk, and other functions to set technical direction, build high-performing teams, and deliver products that make a meaningful impact for millions of customers. This is a leadership role for someone who is equally comfortable thinking strategically and getting into the details. You'll help shape our engineering roadmap, architecture, development practices, and organization while maintaining a strong bias toward execution and customer impact.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant experience leading engineering teams and organizations.
Proven experience managing and developing engineering managers and senior engineers.
Strong Computer Science and software engineering fundamentals.
A track record of building and scaling reliable, customer-facing software products.
Experience designing and evolving distributed systems and engineering organizations as products and companies scale.
Strong technical judgment and the ability to make pragmatic architecture and technology decisions.
Excellent communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.
Strong product sense and an ability to connect technical decisions to customer and business outcomes.
A hands-on, low-ego leadership style with a strong bias toward ownership and execution.
Passion for software quality, engineering excellence, and building teams that move quickly without compromising reliability.

Nice To Haves

Experience working in fintech, banking, payments, lending, or other highly regulated financial systems.
Experience building products at significant consumer scale.
Experience leading engineering teams through a period of rapid growth or organizational change.
Experience with mobile-first consumer products.
Experience with cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, and modern distributed systems.
Experience balancing the demands of security, risk, compliance, reliability, and product velocity.

Responsibilities

Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering organization, creating an environment where engineers can do their best work.
Partner with the CTO and other company leaders to define and execute Step's technical strategy and engineering roadmap.
Own engineering execution across multiple teams, ensuring we deliver high-quality products with speed and predictability.
Work closely with Product and Design to translate customer and business needs into effective technical strategies and solutions.
Provide technical leadership on architecture, scalability, reliability, security, and engineering quality.
Help evolve our systems and development practices to support Step's rapid growth and increasing scale.
Establish and improve engineering processes, standards, and practices without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
Build a strong culture of ownership, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Recruit, develop, and retain exceptional engineering talent, including hiring and developing engineering managers and senior technical leaders.
Identify and remove technical and organizational bottlenecks that prevent teams from moving quickly.
Balance near-term product delivery with long-term investments in platform, infrastructure, architecture, and technical quality.
Help ensure Step's engineering organization can operate reliably and securely as a financial services company serving millions of customers.
Stay close enough to the technology and product to make informed decisions, challenge assumptions, and contribute when the team needs technical leadership.