Director, Software Engineering

Ellevation•Boston, MA

13h

About The Position

Ellevation Education is hiring a senior R&D leader to guide work that spans its eight product squads. The Director will identify cross-squad problems and opportunities, prioritize them for the business, and shape initiatives such as platform modernization, authentication, dependency health, and security. The role leads a team of Staff Engineers, determining how their time is allocated, supporting their technical decisions, and growing the group through hiring and development. The Director works closely with engineering managers, product leads, and R&D leaders to sequence shared work within squad capacity and to establish clear ownership, plans, and outcomes. Security is a core part of the portfolio. The Director will lead Ellevation’s security practice, translate standards agreed with Curriculum Associates (CA) into working practices, and coordinate security work with CA’s centralized security organization. This includes security findings and tooling, incident response, third-party risk, security awareness, district questionnaires, penetration testing, and compliance evidence. The Director will represent Ellevation in CA security forums and report regularly on remediation progress, blockers, and security KPIs. The Director reports to the VP of Engineering and is expected to move work forward independently. They will bring technical and security risk perspectives to R&D leadership decisions, weigh competing priorities for limited R&D capacity, and explain recommendations and tradeoffs to business and executive audiences.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in software engineering, including experience leading engineering teams.
Experience hiring and leading senior and Staff-level engineers and developing them as technical leaders.
Demonstrated ability to take large, ambiguous technical problems spanning teams from definition through delivery, including work with teams that do not report directly to you.
Strong technical foundation in modern web applications, cloud infrastructure, and CI/CD sufficient to assess tradeoffs and earn credibility with Staff Engineers.
Security background spanning application security, cloud security, compliance, and incident response.
Hands-on experience with SAST, SCA, and dependency-scanning tools.
Experience moving decisions forward in a matrixed organization.
Track record of communicating technical and security risk to executive audiences.

Nice To Haves

Experience working between a central function and a business unit at a parent company, acquirer, or major partner.
Experience building software that handles sensitive or regulated data, such as in education, healthcare, or financial services.

Responsibilities

Identify and prioritize technical problems that span product squads, including platform modernization, authentication, dependency health, and security.
Work with Staff Engineers to define cross-cutting problems, scope and timelines, and technical risks before teams commit to work.
Present shaped initiatives to R&D leaders with a clear rationale for their timing and business importance.
Support teams undertaking cross-cutting work and help them make sound technical decisions independently.
Grow the Staff Engineer group through hiring and development.
Set direction for Staff Engineers, allocate and rebalance their time as priorities change, and coach them as technical leaders.
Evaluate technical tradeoffs on cross-cutting work and stand behind the team’s decisions.
Lead Ellevation’s security practice and establish clear ownership and escalation paths within engineering.
Translate security standards agreed with CA into working practices at Ellevation.
Integrate actionable security findings into engineers’ existing tools and workflows, and incorporate security practices such as threat modeling into how work is shaped.
Coordinate security activities with CA, including incident response, vendor and third-party risk, security awareness, district security questionnaires, and penetration testing.
Coordinate engineering and product contributions to Ellevation’s compliance evidence.
Own the relationship with CA’s central security organization and represent Ellevation in its security forums.
Work with CA on security standards, SLAs, KPIs, and how they apply to Ellevation; advocate for changes where they do not fit Ellevation’s way of building software.
Partner with CA on the scope and configuration of centralized scanning for Ellevation’s repositories and technology stack.
Reconcile Ellevation’s security reporting with CA’s reporting.
Report weekly to CA stakeholders on remediation progress, blockers, and security KPIs.
Communicate technical and security risks and recommendations to R&D leaders and executive audiences.