Torchora
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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for an Engineering Director

💰 $220,000 - $350,000+

EngineeringLeadershipTechnologyManagement

🎯 Role Definition

As our Engineering Director, you will be the strategic and operational leader of our engineering organization. You are responsible for architecting not just our software, but also our teams and processes for scale. This role requires a dynamic leader who can balance high-level technical strategy with hands-on mentorship, fostering a culture of innovation, excellence, and psychological safety. You will partner closely with executive leadership to ensure our technology roadmap is a powerful enabler of our business goals, directly impacting our ability to win in the market.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Engineering Manager
  • Principal Software Engineer
  • Staff Engineer with demonstrated leadership experience

Advancement To:

  • Senior Director of Engineering
  • VP of Engineering
  • Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Lateral Moves:

  • Director of Product Management
  • Director of Platform Engineering / DevOps

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Define and execute the long-term technical vision and strategic roadmap for the engineering department, ensuring alignment with overall business objectives and product goals.
  • Lead, mentor, and grow multiple high-performing engineering teams, fostering a culture of innovation, continuous learning, and accountability.
  • Oversee the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), from architectural design and planning to deployment, maintenance, and operational excellence.
  • Partner with Product, Design, and other cross-functional leaders to translate business needs into a deliverable and ambitious product roadmap.
  • Manage the engineering budget, including headcount planning, resource allocation, and technology/vendor selection, to maximize return on investment.
  • Establish and govern best-in-class engineering practices, including coding standards, rigorous code reviews, automated testing, and robust CI/CD pipelines.
  • Champion a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement, encouraging the adoption of new technologies and methodologies that create business value.
  • Develop and implement comprehensive career development frameworks for engineers and managers, focusing on skill growth, mentorship, and clear progression paths.
  • Own the portfolio of engineering services and applications, holding ultimate accountability for their scalability, reliability, security, and performance.
  • Drive critical architectural decisions and technical debt management strategies to ensure the long-term health and maintainability of our technology stack.
  • Actively lead the recruitment, hiring, and onboarding of top-tier engineering talent, building a diverse and inclusive team that reflects our company's values.
  • Define, track, and report on key engineering metrics (e.g., DORA metrics, cycle time, defect rates) to enable data-informed decision-making and process improvements.
  • Guide the organization through periods of rapid growth and technological change, managing ambiguity and providing clear, consistent direction.
  • Ensure all engineering activities are compliant with security standards, data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA), and other relevant industry requirements.
  • Foster a strong DevOps and SRE culture, empowering teams to own their services from development through to production and incident response.
  • Serve as the final escalation point for complex technical, architectural, and personnel challenges within the engineering department.

Secondary Functions

  • Represent the company's engineering brand externally through tech talks, blog posts, open-source contributions, and participation in industry events.
  • Act as a key technical advisor to the executive leadership team, translating complex technical concepts into business implications and strategic recommendations.
  • Champion and sponsor cross-departmental innovation initiatives, guilds, and hackathons to foster creativity and problem-solving.
  • Lead the technical due diligence for potential mergers, acquisitions, and strategic technology partnerships.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • System & Architectural Design: Deep understanding of modern architectural patterns, including microservices, event-driven architectures, and serverless computing, with a proven ability to design scalable, resilient systems.
  • Cloud & DevOps Expertise: Extensive experience with major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and a strong command of DevOps, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code principles (e.g., Kubernetes, Terraform).
  • Agile Methodologies: Mastery of Agile, Scrum, and/or Kanban frameworks, with the ability to optimize processes for team velocity and product quality.
  • Technical Leadership: Ability to guide technical discussions, arbitrate complex architectural debates, and make high-impact technical decisions.
  • Budget & Resource Management: Proficiency in managing departmental budgets, financial forecasting, and strategic resource allocation.
  • Data-Driven Management: Skill in using engineering metrics (like DORA) and data analytics to measure and improve team performance and system health.

Soft Skills

  • Strategic Vision: The ability to think beyond immediate tasks to develop a long-term technology strategy that aligns with and drives business goals.
  • Inspirational Leadership: Proven success in leading, coaching, and motivating managers and individual contributors, fostering career growth and high morale.
  • Stakeholder Management: Exceptional communication, negotiation, and influencing skills, with the ability to build strong relationships and alignment with executive, product, and business counterparts.
  • Business Acumen: A strong understanding of business fundamentals and the ability to connect technical initiatives directly to business outcomes and customer value.
  • Problem-Solving & Decision Making: Calm and decisive under pressure, with a talent for dissecting complex problems and navigating ambiguity.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's Degree in a relevant technical field or equivalent, substantial practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's Degree or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Technology

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 12+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, with at least 5-7 years in a management capacity leading engineering teams.

Preferred:

  • A demonstrated track record of scaling engineering organizations (e.g., from 20 to 100+), shipping complex, high-impact products, and managing other managers in a fast-paced, agile environment.
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