Applause · 4 days ago
Director, Engineering
United States
Full-time
Remote
Director/Executive
8+ years expApplause is a fast-growing tech startup seeking an experienced Director of Engineering to join their leadership team. In this critical management-focused role, you will lead the engineering team, recruit new talent, and drive product development and engineering excellence.
Employee BenefitsFinTechSoftware
Responsibilities
Lead, mentor, and grow the engineering team across all functions (backend, frontend, mobile, DevOps, QA)
Recruit, onboard, and retain exceptional engineering talent
Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, ownership, and continuous improvement
Conduct regular 1-on-1s, performance reviews, and provide coaching to develop future leaders
Partner closely with Product leadership to translate the product roadmap into engineering deliverables
Own sprint planning, resource allocation, and delivery timelines across all engineering initiatives
Ensure predictable, reliable product releases with minimal bugs and strong quality assurance
Drive alignment between engineering capacity and product priorities
Establish and enforce code quality standards, testing practices, and peer review processes
Implement CI/CD pipelines and development workflows that enable rapid, safe deployments
Build quality assurance processes, including automated testing, code coverage, and monitoring
Create technical documentation standards and knowledge-sharing practices
Foster engineering best practices around system design, security, and performance optimization
Collaborate with Lead Developer on technical vision and long-term technology strategy
Make build vs. buy decisions and evaluate new technologies, frameworks, and tools
Oversee infrastructure planning, capacity management, and cloud optimization
Ensure system reliability, uptime, and performance meet SLA commitments
Manage engineering budget and resource planning
Implement metrics and KPIs to measure team productivity, quality, and velocity
Qualification
Required
8+ years in software engineering with 3+ years in engineering leadership roles (Manager or Director level)
Proven track record of scaling engineering teams from 5-10 to 20-50+ engineers
Experience managing managers and building organizational structures
Demonstrated success delivering complex SaaS products in fast-paced startup environments
Strong background in modern web app development and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
Experience implementing engineering processes, standards, and best practices from the ground up
Track record of successful collaboration with Product teams to execute roadmaps
Detail-oriented with strong problem-solving abilities
Very effective in a remote work environment
Preferred
Previous experience at a Series A or Series B SaaS company during hypergrowth (2-5x growth)
Hands-on technical background with the ability to review architecture and code when needed
Experience with modern tech stacks (React, Node.js, Python, Go, microservices, etc.)
Experience with distributed teams or remote-first engineering cultures
History of successful technical hiring and building talent pipelines
Benefits
100% remote w/ no office mandate
Unlimited PTO
22 official company holidays
Health care
Life insurance
Stock options
Amazing colleagues
Energetic culture that is positive and celebrates together
Inspiring mission & software product
Ability to grow your career by being early in a fast-growing tech startup
Company
Applause
With Applause, your employees will act like owners and help you win more lifelong customers.
51-200 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$10.05M2024-01-11Series Unknown· $7M
2022-03-10Seed· $3.05M
Leadership Team
J. Taylor Olson
CEO | Co-Founder
Recent News
2025-09-18
Company data provided by crunchbase