Vice President, Engineering

Submittable

2h • $220,000 - $260,000 • Remote

About The Position

Submittable is hiring a deeply technical, hands-on Vice President of Engineering to run engineering day to day and report to the CTO. The role is responsible for delivery, quality, reliability, cost, and the people who make them happen. It is designed for a small, senior team, with a lean organization and few management layers. The VP is expected to spend roughly one-fifth of the week on technical work, including reading and writing code, reviewing pull requests, handling incidents, and building tools for the teams.

The role turns the CTO’s technical strategy and product roadmap into priorities, plans, and shipped software. It makes AI coding tools a routine part of engineering work, measures their effects, and uses automation to reduce toil while protecting quality. The VP also owns platform reliability, security, and cost for multi-tenant SaaS products running on AWS and Azure with Kubernetes, and partners with infrastructure and security teams on uptime and SOC 2 requirements.

The VP will work with the CTO and Product to build AI capabilities into Submittable’s products, with attention to accuracy and fairness. The role also hires and develops a small, strong engineering team; partners with Product, Design, Customer Experience, and Support; and balances feature delivery with technical debt and platform health. This is a remote, U.S.-based role; the employee must live and reside in the U.S. full-time. Some states are excluded from consideration.

Requirements

• Personally built and shipped production code using AI coding tools within the past 12 months, and able to describe the work, tools, failures, and impact on work practices.
• 15+ years of software engineering experience, with depth in distributed systems, API design, data modeling, cloud infrastructure (AWS and Azure, Kubernetes), and DevOps.
• 7+ years of engineering leadership, including at least 3 years leading other managers.
• Demonstrated ability to raise team output without proportionate headcount growth, supported by delivery, team-size, and cost metrics before and after.
• Experience building and operating multi-tenant, cloud-based B2B SaaS products.
• A record of delivering complex software on predictable timelines without sacrificing quality, security, or reliability.
• Experience leading teams across multiple countries and time zones, including offshore or nearshore partners; clear written communication skills.
• Ability to adapt to rapid changes in software-building practices by forming views, testing them, and changing course based on evidence.
• Ability to explain technical trade-offs to executives and non-technical colleagues in plain language and communicate engineering direction clearly.
• Track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong engineers and building inclusive teams.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in a private equity-backed or high-growth SaaS company.
• Familiarity with SOC 2 and GDPR.
• Experience shipping LLM-based customer features, including evaluating them.
• Experience consolidating platforms or integrating acquired products.

Responsibilities

• Run engineering day to day, turning the CTO’s technical strategy and product roadmap into plans, priorities, and shipped software.
• Stay hands-on by reviewing pull requests, prototyping, debugging production issues, writing tools, and shipping code.
• Make AI coding agents a default part of design, coding, testing, and review, while coaching engineers and removing adoption obstacles.
• Track DORA metrics, customer-facing defects, and engineering cost per release; report where AI helps and where it introduces problems.
• Keep the organization lean, with few management layers, technical managers, small teams, and clear ownership; evaluate tooling and automation before adding headcount.
• Automate engineering toil in areas such as test generation, CI/CD checks, code review assistance, release notes, incident triage, and alerting.
• Set standards for architecture, code review, testing, CI/CD, release management, and incident response to maintain quality as delivery speeds up.
• Own platform reliability, security, and cost for multi-tenant SaaS products on AWS and Azure with Kubernetes; work with infrastructure and security partners on uptime, SOC 2 audits, cloud spend, and architecture simplification.
• Partner with the CTO and Product to develop AI product capabilities and determine how to test them for accuracy and fairness.
• Recruit, develop, and retain a small, strong engineering team; coach managers to stay close to the work and create career paths that reward impact and technical depth.
• Partner with Product and Design on scope and trade-offs among features, technical debt, and platform health.
• Work with Customer Experience and Support to resolve escalations and reduce customer-facing defects.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health and life insurance, with optional HSA, FSA, and DCA accounts.
• 401(k) plan with employer match starting day one.
• Equity stock options.
• Flexible hours, remote work options, and generous vacation and sick leave.
• Paid parental leave for mothers, fathers, and adoptive parents.
• Professional development stipends.
• Opportunities to participate in community outreach and volunteer programs.
• Monthly company-sponsored happy hours and gatherings.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive