Head of Engineering (UpNext)

Scope•New York City, NY

About The Position

As Head of Engineering at UpNext, you will own technical strategy and execution for the UpNext platform, a transfer portal intelligence tool used by college coaches to track transfer portal activity, build recruit lists, and evaluate roster needs. The platform surfaces information about portal activity, recruiting movement, agent representation, and market trends across conferences and recruiting cycles. You will partner with UpNext leadership and the founder to define the technical roadmap and deliver features. This is a foundational engineering role that will help shape engineering decisions as the company scales. The role combines hands-on, full-stack software development with technical leadership, product delivery, stakeholder communication, and operational ownership. You will work across Search, Smart Lists, Insights, Team Pages, Athlete Profiles, and the Activity Feed; develop LLM-powered features and automated workflows; and stay close to the data pipeline and data-provider strategy. During the first three months, you will learn the architecture, integrations, data flows, platform, and recruiting domain, then take increasing ownership of feature development, technical decisions, stakeholder communications, releases, and QA. By month three, you are expected to own the technical roadmap, architecture, weekly release cycle, and delivery timelines. As UpNext grows, you may help shape engineering culture and processes, build out the engineering team, and contribute to product and data strategy. The role is open to hybrid work in Charlotte or New York City and to remote work. Base salary is $120,000 to $200,000, depending on experience and demonstrated ability, with meaningful equity vesting over four years. The role and its responsibilities may evolve, with regular check-ins to adjust expectations and identify growth opportunities. The employer states that reasonable accommodation will be provided for essential functions and that it is an equal opportunity employer.

Requirements

5–7 years building and running production software, with end-to-end ownership; the posting notes that demonstrated ability, judgment, passion, and ownership matter more than exact years of experience or résumé shape.
Strong full-stack skills in TypeScript, Next.js/React, and Postgres (Supabase).
Experience with APIs, third-party integrations, and asynchronous workflows.
Experience developing and owning complex ETL pipelines at scale.
Experience shipping LLM-enabled features and working with AI coding agents.
Solid computer science fundamentals.
Clear communication with founders and other non-engineering stakeholders.
Open to hybrid work in Charlotte or New York City, or remote work.
Must be able to perform all essential functions of the position with reasonable accommodation.

Nice To Haves

Founding or first-engineer experience.
Experience with Supabase, Tailwind CSS, and GCP tools and services.
Experience working with Devin (Cognition's AI engineer).
Former college athlete experience.
A portfolio of passion projects or past initiatives directly built or primarily contributed to by the candidate.
Experience with agentic or long-running AI workflows.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end architecture and technical roadmap, including prioritization, sequencing, and communicating status to leadership.
Write production code across the stack, using AI coding agents to accelerate development.
Ship features across Search, Smart Lists, Insights, Team Pages, Athlete Profiles, and the Activity Feed.
Work with the founder to translate direction, prototypes, and coach feedback into scoped, shippable work.
Build and improve LLM-powered features and automated workflows.
Stay close to the core data pipeline, including NCAA transfer portal data, JUCO data, AI-resolved transfer destinations, and emerging high school data sources; evaluate new data providers to improve coverage and data integrity.
Communicate delivery timelines and technical tradeoffs clearly to leadership.
Translate feedback from coaches and recruiting staff into technical priorities.
Help shape the engineering team and hiring plan as UpNext grows.
Own the weekly release cycle, including code review and QA before changes reach coaches.
Manage bug triage and prioritization across the roadmap.
Improve testing, observability, and deployment where doing so makes development faster and safer.
Learn the existing architecture, integrations, data flows, technical risks, platform, and recruiting and transfer portal domain.
Take increasing ownership of feature development, technical decisions, coach and stakeholder communications, releases, QA, roadmap, architecture, and delivery timelines.
Contribute to engineering culture and processes, team growth, product direction, and data strategy as UpNext scales.