Engineering Director

Obvio•San Carlos, CA

About The Position

Each year, more than 7,500 pedestrians are killed by drivers in the U.S.—a number that has increased by 70% over the past decade. Despite growing awareness, most cities still struggle to curb dangerous driving. “Vision Zero” efforts across the country are falling short. Obvio AI exists to change that. We deploy solar-powered, AI-assisted cameras to enforce traffic laws where pedestrians are most vulnerable—automating enforcement in ways that police departments or traditional systems cannot. Our approach has already led to a dramatic reduction in reckless driving and improved safety for pedestrians, drivers, and law enforcement alike. Founded by the team behind Motive’s AI dashcam, Obvio is backed by Bain Capital Ventures and Khosla Ventures. We recently raised a $22M Series A and are working with some of the most forward-thinking cities in the country. With meaningful revenue, a massive market, and strong policy momentum, we’re building the intelligence layer for safer streets globally. Obvio is hiring its first Engineering Director to lead two of our most critical product teams—Ticketing and Platform—at a pivotal moment in our growth. You'll own the systems that sit at the heart of our mission: the portals used daily by law enforcement agencies and drivers, the external integrations into government and processing systems, the payments infrastructure that keeps our business running, and the cloud foundation that the entire engineering org depends on. Our current systems were built to get us here—fast. Now, with serious momentum behind us, we need to mature them into infrastructure that can scale with our ambitions. This role is equal parts operator and architect: someone who can keep the trains running today while laying the tracks for where we're going tomorrow. If you've led engineering through a hypergrowth phase before and have the scars to show for it, we'd love to talk.

Requirements

Managerial Grit: 5+ years leading engineering teams in fast-moving environments. You've managed through ambiguity, made hard calls, and come out the other side with stronger teams. Experience with distributed or international teams is a significant plus.
Technical Depth: 12+ years of hands-on experience building web-based applications. You can go deep on architecture, spot a bad technical decision before it becomes a production incident, and earn the respect of strong engineers.
Architectural Vision: You've successfully modernized or rebuilt legacy systems while keeping production stable—and you know that the hardest part isn't the technology, it's managing the transition.
Operational Instincts: You treat uptime as a product feature. You know how to instrument systems, diagnose bottlenecks, and build the on-call culture that keeps pages rare and recoveries fast. You understand that if our review tool goes down, enforcement stops—and you take that seriously.
First Principles Mindset: You don't cargo-cult solutions from your last company. You understand our constraints, dig into the specifics, and build what's right for where Obvio is today and where it's going.

Nice To Haves

Python, React, and AWS experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

Lead a Global Team: Manage and mentor a distributed team of engineers across time zones. You'll set the cultural tone, build bridges across geographies, and create the conditions for consistently high-velocity execution.
Grow the Team: Own recruiting and talent development for your teams—defining the hiring bar, building the pipeline, and investing in the growth of the engineers already here.
Stay Close to the Work: Your primary job is leadership, but you won't manage from a distance. You'll be in the code reviews, shaping architectural decisions, and rolling up your sleeves when the team needs to break through a hard problem.
Build Products Engineers and Customers Are Proud Of: Work closely with product and operations to make sure engineering is solving the right problems—for law enforcement partners and drivers alike. Establish feedback loops that surface customer pain points quickly and a team culture that takes them seriously.
Harden Our Systems: Take ownership of the transition from speed-to-market to production-grade— building incident response muscle, and ensuring our infrastructure, integrations, and customer portals are secure, observable, and resilient. When something breaks at 2am, your team knows exactly what to do.
Raise the Engineering Bar: Define what great engineering looks like at Obvio—from code review standards to testing culture to deployment practices—and build the tooling and processes (CI/CD, architecture reviews) that make high-quality work the path of least resistance.