VP of Engineering

BlastPoint•Pittsburgh, PA

About The Position

We are seeking an experienced and strategic Vice President of Engineering to lead, grow, and scale our engineering organization. As VP of Engineering, you will be a key member of the leadership team, responsible for the overall health and output of our engineering function. You will own the delivery of BlastPoint's products, set the technical direction alongside the CEO, and build a high-performing team culture rooted in speed, quality, and collaboration. The ideal candidate thrives in fast-paced startup environments, brings deep experience managing and mentoring software engineering teams, and has a strong technical foundation in data-intensive systems. You will be expected to remove roadblocks, accelerate development velocity, and help us scale from a small, nimble team to a robust engineering organization—all while keeping the scrappy, builder mindset that got us here.

Requirements

5+ Years Experience as a VP of Engineering, Engineering Director or similar leadership role, managing software engineering teams, including hiring, performance management, and team development. (venture-backed startup preferred)
Proven track record of scaling engineering organizations at high-growth startups or technology companies (Series A through Series C experience strongly preferred).
Deep technical background with hands-on experience in Python, cloud infrastructure (AWS required), and building data-intensive applications.
Experience with AWS services such as SageMaker, ECS/EKS, Lambda, RDS, and S3 in production environments
Experience leading teams that build and maintain AI/ML or data analytics platforms, data pipelines, or SaaS products that process large-scale datasets.
Strong understanding of modern software development practices: Agile/Scrum, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, microservices, and containerization.
Demonstrated ability to improve engineering velocity, remove organizational bottlenecks, and deliver high-quality software on schedule.
Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate between technical and non-technical stakeholders, including the executive team, customers, and investors.
A growth mindset with a bias for action—comfortable operating in ambiguity, making decisions with imperfect information, and iterating quickly.
Authorized to work in the United States.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with machine learning workflows, model deployment, and MLOps tooling.
Experience with geospatial data, customer analytics, or intelligence platforms.
Background in regulated industries such as energy, utilities, financial services, or insurance.
Contributions to open-source projects or a strong public engineering presence (blog, talks, community involvement).
Willingness to travel domestically for company events (2–4 times per year).

Responsibilities

Lead, manage, and mentor the engineering team, fostering a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Define and own the long-term technical strategy and architecture vision, ensuring alignment with company objectives, scalability requirements, and market opportunities.
Partner with the CEO, CTO, and Product team to translate business strategy into a long-term engineering roadmap with clear milestones and measurable outcomes.
Own engineering execution: sprint planning, resource allocation, release management, and delivery timelines.
Recruit, hire, and onboard top engineering talent to scale the team in line with company growth objectives.
Proactively identify and eliminate operational and technical roadblocks, while anticipating future scalability and architectural constraints to ensure BlastPoint’s platform and engineering processes evolve ahead of company growth.
Establish and refine engineering best practices, including code review, CI/CD, testing, and incident response.
Oversee the architecture and technical health of BlastPoint's platform, ensuring systems are reliable, scalable, and maintainable.
Manage cross-functional collaboration between engineering, data science, product, and customer success teams.
Drive a data-informed engineering culture, using metrics (cycle time, deployment frequency, reliability) to continuously improve output.
Act as a technical leader in customer-facing contexts when needed, supporting sales engineering, technical due diligence, and customer escalations.