Engineering Director

Role Overview

The Engineering Director leads JoyRide's Engineering function, owning its overall performance, delivery, technical direction, and continuous improvement.

This is both a strategic and hands-on leadership role. The Engineering Director is expected to set direction and build strong engineering practices while staying close enough to the work to step into critical incidents, unblock complex initiatives, and guide important technical decisions when needed.

The role also owns engineering standards and ways of working across the organization, ensuring strong practices in architecture, code quality, documentation, development workflow, technical debt management, and engineering delivery.

What You'll Own

• Overall performance, delivery, technical direction, and organizational health of the Engineering function.
• Engineering standards and best practices across architecture, code quality, documentation, development workflow, and technical governance.
• Performance, development, and effectiveness of Engineering Managers and Senior Engineering Managers.
• Engineering capacity, resourcing, delivery health, and technical risk across teams.
• Engineering representation in Technology and cross-functional business planning.

Key Responsibilities

Engineering Strategy and Excellence

• Define and continuously evolve Engineering strategy in support of current and future business needs.
• Establish and drive adoption of engineering standards, architecture principles, development practices, and documentation.
• Drive structured initiatives to reduce technical debt, legacy risk, and recurring engineering issues.
• Continuously improve engineering processes, productivity, reliability, and quality across teams.

Delivery and Technical Leadership

• Maintain visibility into engineering delivery, resourcing, dependencies, and technical risks across all teams.
• Hold Engineering Managers accountable for delivery timelines, quality, and team performance.
• Step into stuck initiatives, critical production incidents, and complex technical decisions when direct intervention is needed.
• Identify systemic blockers and implement sustainable solutions rather than relying on repeated reactive fixes.
• Use engineering and delivery metrics, including Jira and Metabase reporting, to identify issues and drive improvement.

People Leadership

• Lead and develop Engineering Managers and Senior Engineering Managers through clear expectations, coaching, performance management, and career development.
• Establish consistent standards for management performance, leveling, and promotions.
• Identify organizational and capability gaps and ensure teams have the appropriate structure, leadership, and technical expertise.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner closely with Product and other business functions to align technical priorities with business and product objectives.
• Act as a strategic counterpart to the heads of Platform & Architecture, QA, Delivery, Security, and Technical Support.
• Represent Engineering in Technology Division planning, prioritization, and performance reviews.
• Communicate engineering priorities, constraints, risks, and trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years managing managers or leading multiple engineering teams.
• Strong technical foundation with sufficient depth to guide architecture, system-level decisions, and complex technical discussions.
• Demonstrated ability to operate at both strategic and tactical levels, from organizational planning to critical incidents and delivery issues.
• Proven track record of improving engineering practices, processes, quality, and delivery across multiple teams.
• Experience leading and developing Engineering Managers and building high-performing engineering organizations.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, engineering quality, technical debt management, development lifecycle, and modern engineering practices.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, leadership, and stakeholder management skills.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment with multiple products, priorities, and technical dependencies.