Director of Engineering

Crane Venture Partners; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company is seeking a Director of Engineering to drive the growth and efficiency of their engineering team. This role involves not just overseeing the team but also shaping the company's future through strategic vision. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in organizing high-performing teams and a proven track record in delivering complex software. Candidates should possess a collaborative spirit and thrive in a startup environment, with a passion for building meaningful systems that contribute to company success.

Benefits

Attractive compensation package

Substantial equity package

Career growth opportunities

Qualifications

• Experience building and scaling high-performing engineering teams.
• Fluent in modern development practices such as CI/CD and quality assurance.
• Experience in a startup environment and ability to thrive in fast-moving situations.

Responsibilities

• Lead hiring, onboarding, and organizational design.
• Drive execution excellence and deliver with high velocity.
• Champion a culture of technical excellence and collaboration.

Skills

Organizational leadership

Communication

Stakeholder management

Modern development practices

Team building

Tools

AWS

Job description

About the Position:

We’re looking for a Director Engineering based in NYC to join as the senior-most engineering leader alongside our CTO. This is not just a leadership role—it’s a unique opportunity to help shape the foundation of a fast-moving, product-driven startup during a critical phase of growth.

You’ll lead the charge on execution, quality, team culture, and organizational design. You'll help transform early-stage velocity into mature, high-performing systems—without losing the edge and pace that define great startups.

This role demands a builder’s mindset, a strategic view, and a deep sense of ownership. You’ll have a massive opportunity to shape how we hire, how we work, and how we scale—not just the technology, but the team and company itself. If you’re excited by high-impact challenges, fast cycles, and the chance to leave a lasting mark, we’d love to talk.

The role is based in New York City, and we are flexible about hybrid work.

What you’ll be doing:

• Scale the team: Lead hiring, onboarding, and org design as we grow from a small, tight-knit team to a high-performing engineering organization.
• Drive execution excellence: Ensure we deliver with high velocity, quality, and reliability. Implement and evolve processes, tools, and metrics to support scalable and repeatable delivery.
• Lead and mentor: Support and grow engineering managers and individual contributors through coaching, feedback, and structured career development.
• Own engineering culture: Champion a culture of technical excellence, autonomy, ownership, and collaboration.
• Collaborate cross-functionally: Work closely with the CTO, product, design, and business leads to define and deliver on the product roadmap and business goals.
• Make technical contributions: While this is not a hands-on coding role, you should be capable of engaging deeply on architecture, technical decisions, and trade-offs.
• Ensure platform reliability: Partner with DevOps and product teams to ensure our systems are scalable, secure, and resilient as we grow.
• Help set strategic direction: Bring an engineering voice to the table in company-wide strategic planning and decision making.
• Continuously improve: Identify and address bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or misalignments—always looking for ways to raise the bar.

Qualifications:

• Have experience building and scaling high-performing engineering teams, ideally from early to growth stage.
• Bring strong organizational leadership skills—you’ve built teams, led managers, shaped culture, and influenced cross-functional strategy.
• Have a track record of delivering complex, high-quality software in a product-focused environment.
• Are fluent in modern development practices—CI/CD, cloud platforms (ideally AWS), infrastructure automation, quality assurance, and system reliability.
• Have excellent communication and stakeholder management skills—you can influence at all levels and make decisions that align tech and business needs.
• Lead with humility, clarity, and high standards. You’re as comfortable rolling up your sleeves as you are zooming out to set vision and strategy.
• Have previous experience in a startup environment and thrive in fast-moving, ambiguous situations. You know how to operate without a lot of structure and enjoy building it.
• Want to be part of building something meaningful from the ground up.

About Bluefish:

Bluefish believes that AI represents the next major chapter of the internet – and that consumers will increasingly use AI to consume information and media online. On this new AI internet, brands will need new tools and technologies to tell their stories to consumers online – and a new marketing ecosystem will be created around AI. Bluefish is building the platform that helps brands engage consumers on this new AI channel, with powerful enterprise tools to manage AI brand safety and engage consumers with thoughtful and personalized AI marketing experiences.

The Bluefish team is a tight-knit group of mar-tech industry veterans who previously helped build foundational ad-tech platforms now owned by Meta and Microsoft. The company is backed by leading AI and data focused investors, including Crane Ventures, BloombergBeta, Firebolt Ventures and Laconia Capital.

We are a globally distributed team, with business operations based in New York City and engineering based in Berlin.

Why Bluefish:

• Unique opportunity to join on the ground floor of a fast-moving startup building at the center of AI
• Tackle challenging and abstract problems while disrupting the $300BN legacy mar-tech industry
• Join an experienced high-performing team where you will have immediate ownership and impact
• Experience a true meritocracy with significant career growth upside as the business scales

We provide an attractive compensation package tailored to your experience. Additionally, we offer a substantial equity package aligned with our company's stage, ensuring that everyone on the Bluefish team has a stake in our shared success.