Role Overview
Engineering Director (Head of Product Engineering)
The Engineering Director is the strategic and operational leader of JoyRide's Engineering function — owning the performance, evolution, and direction of every engineering team. This is a hands-on, tactical role as much as a strategic one: the Director is expected to be close enough to the work to step into a stuck project, a critical incident, or a contentious technical call, while also setting the direction the whole function moves in.
The Engineering Director owns engineering best practice and process standards for JoyRide — not as a policy document, but as something actively driven, maintained, and improved. This role is expected to anticipate what needs to happen, drive initiatives forward, and hold others accountable to high standards, even if no one asks.
What You'll Own
- The full performance, delivery, and direction of the Engineering function — every team, not just a subset.
- Engineering best practices and process standards — code quality, architecture, documentation, workflow — company-wide, and the roadmap to keep improving them.
- The Engineering Managers and Senior Engineering Managers who report to you: their performance, growth, and leveling.
- Engineering's seat at the table in cross-functional and VP-level planning.
Strategic & Process Leadership
- Define and continuously evolve Engineering's strategy to support current and future business goals.
- Own the standards for code quality, architecture, documentation, and development workflow — and personally drive the roadmap to improve them, not delegate it by default.
- Actively reduce technical debt and legacy risk through structured plans, not reactive fixes.
- Align organizational design, technical direction, and engineering culture with the company's vision.
Tactical & Hands-On Leadership
- Stay close enough to the work to step into a stuck initiative, a production incident, or a contested technical decision — this is a hands-on role, not a purely administrative one.
- Review progress and unblock issues through systems where possible, but know when direct intervention is the right call.
- Maintain real visibility into delivery metrics, resourcing, and technical risk across every team, using the division’s Metabase/Jira reporting.
People Leadership
- Lead Engineering Managers and Senior Engineering Managers through clear expectations, performance oversight, and career development.
- Calibrate leveling and promotions across the Engineering Manager / Senior Engineering Manager track.
- Address management-level performance issues directly and constructively.
Cross-Functional & Business Alignment
- Own end-to-end accountability for delivery timelines, output quality, and resource health across Engineering.
- Act as strategic counterpart to the heads of Platform & Architecture, QA, Delivery, Security, and Technical Support.
- Represent Engineering in VP-level planning and reporting for the Technology Division.
Qualifications
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years managing managers or leading multiple engineering teams.
- Demonstrated ability to operate at both strategic and tactical altitude — comfortable in a planning session and in an incident channel in the same day.
- Track record of setting and driving adoption of engineering standards and practices across an organization, not just a single team.
- Strong technical background sufficient to guide architectural and system-level decisions personally.
- Proven success building high-performance, high-trust engineering organizations.