Engineering Director

College Board • Remote - Virginia, VA

2d • $140,000 - $175,000 • Remote

About The Position

The Engineering Director leads a high-impact team responsible for delivering and operating College Board systems that support student score reporting. The role balances reliable operation of mission-critical systems with platform modernization, emerging technology adoption, and contributions to College Board’s long-term strategy for a consolidated Bluebook platform. The Director sets direction, removes obstacles, translates strategy into execution, and builds partnerships across product, architecture, data, and business teams.

The position leads approximately eight engineers and guides team priorities, development, and performance. It also partners with stakeholders to clarify business needs, align priorities across interdependent systems, communicate technical concepts, and advance AI-enabled capabilities. The Director oversees discovery, technical decision-making, delivery planning, architecture alignment, cost and performance optimization, security, compliance, operational readiness, and production issue resolution. Team scope and technical challenges are expected to evolve as College Board advances its platform strategy.

Requirements

• 10 or more years of software engineering experience, including building and operating secure, data-intensive, cloud-based systems.
• Demonstrated success leading engineering teams delivering complex products, services, or platform capabilities at scale.
• Hands-on experience managing or owning web applications, ideally a user-facing portal, with knowledge of related security and infrastructure considerations such as authentication, access controls, web application firewalls, and hosting environments.
• Strong people-management experience, including coaching, performance management, and career development.
• Ability to plan, prioritize, and execute in fast-paced, evolving environments.
• Sound technical judgment, including experience reviewing designs, guiding architectural decisions, and partnering with senior engineers.
• Ability to influence engineering strategy and decisions across teams and leadership levels.
• Calm, thoughtful leadership under pressure, with a focus on outcomes and continuous improvement.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, including the ability to translate between business and technical contexts.
• Passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work.
• Curiosity about emerging technologies and willingness to experiment with and adopt AI-driven solutions.
• Ability to learn and apply new digital tools independently and proactively.
• Clear and concise written and verbal communication skills.
• Learner’s mindset and commitment to growth, welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving respectful feedback, and improving through iterative learning and user input.
• Drive for impact and excellence, including solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing effectively, and learning from user input and external benchmarking.
• Collaborative and empathetic approach, including working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to shared success.
• Authorization to work in the United States.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with AI integrations.

Responsibilities

• Lead approximately eight engineers responsible for building and operating student score reporting systems.
• Set team vision and priorities, track progress, and provide coaching and feedback to support performance and growth.
• Foster an inclusive, high-achieving culture and develop team structures to meet evolving skill and capacity needs.
• Develop individual team members’ strengths to deliver scalable solutions using cloud and AI-enabled technologies.
• Model College Board’s Operating Principles and Manager Expectations.
• Partner with business and technology stakeholders to clarify score reporting needs, constraints, and opportunities.
• Build relationships with product, data, and engineering leaders to align priorities across complex systems.
• Communicate technical concepts to diverse audiences and support informed decision-making.
• Partner on AI-enabled capabilities for score reporting, insights, and operational efficiency.
• Drive engineering excellence through design reviews, shared standards, and constructive technical discussion.
• Balance scope, impact, and effort, and collaborate with architects, senior and lead engineers, and data leads to evaluate features, estimate effort, and plan delivery.
• Understand business problems and translate them into technical direction.
• Lead Agile and post-Agile delivery practices, maintaining clear priorities and delivery momentum.
• Guide technical decisions by evaluating options and tradeoffs, and serve as an arbiter when needed.
• Align architecture, cloud services, and delivery patterns with organizational goals.
• Translate product and platform roadmaps into actionable plans and prioritize epics and stories with stakeholders.
• Manage scope and identify and reduce technical debt.
• Monitor application cost and performance and work with internal teams to optimize efficiency and scalability.
• Integrate security and compliance into design and delivery.
• Ensure clean delivery and operational readiness, and maintain reliable services throughout their lifecycle.
• Lead identification, triage, and resolution of production issues.
• Keep current with Generative AI software developments and share knowledge to support team best practices.

Benefits

• Comprehensive compensation and benefits package.
• Fair and competitive compensation based on qualifications, experience, impact, and market data.
• Location-adjusted salaries.

What This Job Offers

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