Director of Engineering

First Due; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 216,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

FSA/HSA

401(k)

Flexible PTO

Fully remote workplace

Technology stipend

Career advancement

Job summary

First Due is seeking a strategic Director of Engineering to lead and scale our engineering organization. This remote-US role partners with Product, Design, Customer Success, and executives to align engineering investments with business goals while driving delivery excellence and a high-growth SaaS culture.

The ideal candidate will develop engineers, manage managers, and balance long-term technical vision with day-to-day execution, fostering accountability and continuous improvement across

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including leadership roles.
• 5+ years of engineering management, including managing multiple teams.
• Proven success shipping software in SaaS or cloud environments.
• Strong software architecture, scalability, reliability and security knowledge.
• Experience building and retaining high-performing engineering organizations.
• Ability to drive organizational change and process excellence.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration with product, design, and executives.
• Experience leading distributed or remote teams across time zones.
• Business acumen to align technical investments with company goals.
• Exceptional communication and leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead and scale the engineering organization and develop leaders.
• Own engineering delivery against product roadmaps and objectives.
• Partner with Product, Design, Customer Success and executives.
• Establish performance expectations and provide coaching.
• Drive operational excellence with CI/CD, testing, and release management.
• Ensure platform reliability, security, and scalability.
• Oversee production operations, incident management and postmortems.
• Communicate strategy and progress to senior leadership.
• Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Skills

Software engineering

Engineering management

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication skills

System design

Security & reliability

Job description

First Due’s mission is to prevent first responder injury or death by providing fire and EMS agencies with transformative, end-to-end software solutions that empower them to run safer, smarter, and more effective operations.

Job Title: Director of Engineering

Location: Remote - US Only
Country: United States
Department: Engineering
Reports To: SVP, Engineering
Position Type: Full-Time
Salary: $240,000 + Bonus

Job Summary:

First Due is seeking a strategic and people-focused Director of Engineering to lead and scale our engineering organization. This role is responsible for developing engineering leaders and teams, defining technical and operational strategy, driving delivery excellence, and ensuring the successful execution of our product roadmap.

The Director of Engineering will partner closely with Product, Design, Customer Success, and executive leadership to align engineering investments with business priorities while fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement. The ideal candidate is an experienced engineering leader who can go deep with individual team performance and delivery yet has successfully managed managers and engineering teams within a high-growth SaaS environment and can effectively balance long-term technical vision with day-to-day execution.

Key Responsibilities:

Engineering Leadership & Team Development

• Understand our products, how customers use them, and be able to go deep with individual teams to optimize their delivery with broader PDLC stakeholders
• Hire, Lead, mentor, and develop Engineering Managers and technical leaders, fostering a high-performance culture focused on accountability, growth, and execution.
• Build and scale a world-class engineering organization through hiring, succession planning, talent development, and organizational design.
• Establish clear performance expectations and provide ongoing coaching, feedback, and career development opportunities.
• Promote employee engagement, collaboration, inclusion, and continuous learning across the engineering organization.
• Drive organizational health, retention, and team effectiveness through thoughtful leadership and management practices.

Delivery & Execution

• Own engineering execution and delivery against company objectives, product roadmaps, and strategic initiatives.
• Partner with Product and Design leadership to establish priorities, staffing plans, and delivery timelines.
• Drive predictable software delivery through effective planning, resource allocation, estimation, and prioritization.
• Monitor engineering metrics and delivery performance to identify opportunities for increased velocity, quality, and operational efficiency.
• Ensure effective communication and alignment across distributed teams and stakeholders.

Technical & Architectural Leadership

• Partner with engineering leaders to define and evolve technical strategy, architecture, scalability, security, and platform reliability.
• Provide leadership on major architectural decisions, technical investments, and platform modernization efforts.
• Ensure engineering teams maintain high standards for software quality, maintainability, performance, and security.
• Support evaluation of emerging technologies, tools, and development practices that improve business outcomes and engineering effectiveness.
• Balance short-term business objectives with long-term platform health and technical sustainability.

Operational Excellence

• Establish and continuously improve engineering processes, development standards, testing practices, CI/CD pipelines, and release management procedures.
• Oversee production operations, incident management, root cause analysis, and service reliability practices.
• Ensure teams maintain strong operational readiness through monitoring, observability, support processes, and on-call coverage.
• Partner with Security, Infrastructure, and Product teams to ensure compliance, data protection, and platform resilience.
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement through retrospectives, process optimization, and operational reviews.
• Observe and evaluate third party spending and recommend changes in tools. Processes, and License Renewals

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Serve as a key leader in cross-functional planning and strategic decision-making.
• Collaborate with Product, Customer Success, Sales, Operations, and executive leadership to ensure alignment between business goals and engineering execution.
• Communicate engineering strategy, risks, priorities, and progress to senior leadership and key stakeholders.
• Advocate for customer needs and ensure engineering teams remain focused on delivering solutions that create measurable customer value.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience leading and scaling engineering teams.
• 5+ years of engineering management experience, including experience managing Engineering Managers or multiple engineering teams.
• Proven success leading software delivery within a SaaS, cloud-based, or technology-driven organization.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, system design, scalability, reliability, security, and modern engineering practices.
• Experience building, developing, and retaining high-performing engineering organizations.
• Demonstrated ability to drive organizational change, process improvement, and operational excellence.
• Strong experience managing cross-functional relationships and influencing decision-making across multiple stakeholder groups.
• Experience overseeing distributed or remote teams across multiple geographic locations and time zones.
• Strong business acumen with the ability to align technical investments to company objectives and customer outcomes.
• Exceptional communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience leading engineering organizations in a high-growth SaaS environment.
• Experience supporting mission-critical, customer-facing applications and services.
• Familiarity with cloud-native architectures, DevOps practices, observability platforms, and modern software development methodologies.
• Experience with modern AI-driven Software Development best practices
• Experience scaling teams through periods of rapid growth and organizational change.
• Exposure to mobile, web, platform, infrastructure, and data engineering organizations.
• Experience partnering with executive leadership on annual planning, budgeting, and strategic initiatives.

For US-based Roles All applicants must be authorized to work for any US employer in the United States. Locality Media LLC is unable to sponsor or transition sponsorship ownership of employment visas at this time. Hiring is contingent upon candidates successfully passing a criminal background check. As part of the I-9 verification of authorization to work in the US, Locality Media participates in E-Verify.

Physical Demands and Work Environment This role is fully remote with minimal travel expectations at this time. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable qualified employees and applicants to perform the essential functions as outlined above. If you require an accommodation during the interview process, please reach out to [e-mail].

Working at First Due First Due offers a comprehensive compensation and benefits package for eligible employees, including competitive pay, medical, dental, and vision coverage, FSA/HSA, 401(k), flexible PTO, a fully remote workplace, a technology stipend, opportunities for advancement, and other benefits and perks that sets our team apart. Visit www.firstdue.com to learn more.

If you are a resident of a state requiring wage transparency, please reach out to [e-mail] for a reasonable estimate of annual base compensation and any eligible incentive compensation. The actual compensation offered to successful candidates for roles may be higher or lower, based on non-discriminatory criteria including but not limited to relevant professional experience, geographic location, knowledge, skills, and abilities. This range will be reviewed on a regular basis.

First Due is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in any aspect of employment on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status, or any other protected status or class. We are committed to promoting an environment of respect, acceptance, diversity and inclusivity, and equal opportunity. Discrimination and harassment of any type in any form will not be tolerated.