Director, Software Engineering

GoodLeap•San Francisco, CA

13d•$243,000 - $282,000

About The Position

We are seeking a Director of Engineering to lead the development of our next-generation SaaS platform serving professionals in the trades industry. This platform empowers users with advanced tools for project management, energy modeling, savings calculations, and optimization of home energy systemsâincluding rooftop solar, battery storage, and home efficiency and home improvement upgrades. As the Director of Engineering, you will be responsible for shaping the technical strategy, system architecture, and organizational structure of this critical important new product and business area. Youâll lead a growing team, working closely with product and design leadership to ensure the delivery of secure, scalable, and high-performance software. This is a pivotal leadership role for a hands-on technical leader with a passion for team development, deep architectural experience, and a track record of building resilient, distributed systems in fast-paced environments.

Requirements

10+ years of engineering experience, with at least 5 years in technical leadership roles, including managing engineering managers and cross-functional teams.
Proven success in leading the development of complex, cloud-native SaaS platforms.
Deep technical expertise in:
Python, FastAPI, and modern asynchronous programming
Distributed systems and microservices architecture
Event-driven design and message queuing (e.g., RabbitMQ)
Infrastructure-as-Code with Terraform or OpenTofu
Scalable CI/CD pipelines and DevOps best practices
Strong grasp of the full SDLC and Agile development methodologies.
Experience guiding teams through architectural decisions and hands-on problem solving.
Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with the energy domain, including solar modeling, battery storage, VPPs, and energy efficiency tools.
Experience building platforms for prosumers or professionals in regulated industries.
Prior work with high-scale data systems or machine learning infrastructure is a plus.
Experience with cloud-native ecosystems (AWS, GCP) and service mesh tools.

Responsibilities

Lead and mentor engineering managers and senior ICs across multiple teams, promoting a high-performance, collaborative culture.
Define the engineering vision and roadmap in alignment with company goals and product strategy.
Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and technical excellence.
Drive hiring and talent development to build a strong, diverse engineering organization.
Architect and guide the implementation of a distributed, event-driven platform leveraging Python, FastAPI, and modern software delivery practices.
Ensure systems are robust, scalable, secure, and highly available, capable of supporting complex energy modeling and analytics.
Lead technical reviews, design sessions, and engineering planning to ensure architectural decisions align with business needs and long-term maintainability.
Establish and enforce software development best practices across SDLC, including coding standards, testing, monitoring, and documentation.
Partner closely with Product, Design, Data, and Operations teams to align engineering efforts with customer outcomes and business impact.
Own delivery and execution across large, complex initiativesâbalancing velocity, quality, and cost.
Define and track KPIs and SLAs to measure and continuously improve engineering performance and system reliability.
Advance CI/CD pipelines, observability tooling, and deployment automation to enable rapid, reliable releases.
Ensure adherence to security, compliance, and operational best practices across cloud-based infrastructure.
Support platform scalability and maintainability through disciplined technical debt management and modular architecture.