VP of Product Engineering

Clever•San Francisco, OR

About The Position

Clever is seeking a Vice President of Product Engineering to lead five product engineering teams of approximately 40 engineers. The teams build Clever’s two-sided education platform, which provides school districts with identity management, single sign-on, and a student and teacher portal, while enabling education technology applications to integrate through Clever’s APIs. The product engineering organization works across the full stack on a container-based microservices architecture in AWS, using Go, Node, and TypeScript. Reporting to the CTO and partnering as a peer with the VP of Product, the VP of Product Engineering will jointly own product strategy and the product and engineering roadmap. The role balances the needs of school districts and application partners with the scale, resilience, and security required for daily use by students and educators. It includes setting technical direction and architecture, engaging directly with customer technical leaders, and leading the application of AI throughout the software development lifecycle. Success includes a jointly owned roadmap, predictable delivery on customer priorities, a strong management bench across all five teams, and AI integrated into how teams plan, build, test, and ship. The role also represents Clever in customer business reviews, industry events, and education technology standards groups. Travel one to two times per quarter is required for company and customer meetings.

Requirements

10 or more years of experience as an engineering leader, including at least 3 years at director level or higher.
Experience leading a multi-team engineering organization of roughly 30 or more engineers through managers, including hiring and developing managers and building an inclusive, high-performing culture.
Technical leadership grounded in building software, with the ability to review designs, challenge architecture decisions, and earn the respect of senior engineers.
Experience leading an engineering organization in applying AI across the software development lifecycle, with demonstrable results.
Experience building and operating external, customer-facing SaaS products with high-availability and resilience requirements.
Experience partnering as a peer with a product leader to set strategy and roadmap.
Experience working directly with customers’ technical decision makers, such as CIOs, CTOs, or IT leaders, and translating their input into product and architecture decisions.
Ability to communicate technical strategy and tradeoffs clearly to executives, customers, and engineers.
Able to travel one to two times per quarter for company and customer meetings.

Nice To Haves

Experience building SSO, identity lifecycle, directory, rostering, or access management products.
Experience building platforms, developer ecosystems, or APIs used by other companies.
Experience building products for customers outside the U.S., including adapting products to local data privacy rules, languages, and regional requirements.
Experience in edtech or building for K-12 or higher education institutions.
Hands-on familiarity with AWS, Go, Node, TypeScript, and container-based microservices.
Experience scaling a platform to millions of daily users in a regulated industry such as education, healthcare, or finance.
Participation in industry standards bodies, or experience representing an engineering organization through talks, writing, or advisory boards.

Responsibilities

Lead five product engineering teams comprising approximately 40 engineers.
Jointly own product strategy and the product and engineering roadmap with the VP of Product.
Balance the needs of school districts and application partners while ensuring platform scale, resilience, and security.
Lead the use of AI throughout the software development lifecycle, including design, coding, testing, review, and release.
Set technical direction and architecture for Clever’s products and assess complex systems to maintain their soundness.
Build a strong bench of managers by hiring and developing leaders across the engineering teams.
Deliver predictably on work that matters most to customers.
Engage directly with district CIOs and CTOs, application partner CTOs and chief customer officers, and their technical staff; incorporate customer input into product and architecture decisions.
Represent Clever in customer business reviews, industry events, and education technology standards groups.
Travel one to two times per quarter for company and customer meetings.