Head of Engineering — Remote & Scale-Up Leader

Orbis; McLean (VA); Remote; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive retirement matching

PTO policy

Job summary

Orbis seeks a Vice President of Engineering to guide a growing, remote-first engineering organization. You will report to the CTO, shape the delivery engine, and build a culture that scales with the company’s rapid growth across the United States and its territories.

You will own hiring, leadership development, and architectural standards, ensuring secure, reliable delivery for DoD and allied customers while collaborating with product, security, and operations.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading engineering organizations through other managers, with at least 3 years at the director level or above.
• Prior experience as an engineering leader at a small or early-stage company, including operating with limited process and building structure as the company scales.
• Demonstrated success as a people leader: developing managers, building diverse and high-performing teams, handling difficult performance and staffing decisions, and retaining top talent through rapid growth.
• Proven success scaling an engineering organization through rapid growth, including building hiring pipelines and interview processes.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication, with a record of setting direction, giving candid feedback, and explaining engineering trade-offs to executives, boards, and customers.
• Proven experience leading a fully remote engineering organization across multiple time zones, including schedules, core hours, meeting cadences, and on-call coverage.
• Hands‑on technical background in modern software delivery (cloud‑native architecture, distributed systems, CI/CD, and DevSecOps), including production experience with Rust, Go, or TypeScript and with AWS, GCP, or Cloudflare.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance.
• Ability to travel up to 25%.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop engineering leadership, including directors and managers, and build a scalable leadership bench.
• Own the engineering workforce plan, hiring strategy, and interview process to triple the team while maintaining standards.
• Shape the engineering culture, define norms, career paths, recognition, and feedback loops.
• Communicate with clarity at all levels, translating technical trade-offs into business terms for executives and customers.
• Own delivery and accountability, partner with product leadership to turn priorities into predictable delivery, manage debt and capacity.
• Set technical direction and consolidate platforms across Rust, Go, TS, and React, and across AWS, GCP and Cloudflare.
• Scale knowledge through documentation standards, onboarding, and training.
• Ensure security and quality to meet government and allied customer requirements, including constrained/disconnected environments.
• Lead a remote team across U.S. time zones with asynchronous communication as default.
• Collaborate with CTO, Product, Security, People, and IT on budget, headcount, and vendor decisions.
• Travel up to 25% to McLean, VA HQ, team gatherings, and customer sites.

Skills

Leadership

Remote team leadership

Cloud-native

CI/CD

DevSecOps

Rust/Go/TypeScript

AWS/GCP/Cloudflare

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Rust

Go

TypeScript

AWS

GCP

Cloudflare

Job description

Orbis seeks a Vice President of Engineering to guide a growing, remote-first engineering organization. You will report to the CTO, shape the delivery engine, and build a culture that scales with the company’s rapid growth across the United States and its territories.

You will own hiring, leadership development, and architectural standards, ensuring secure, reliable delivery for DoD and allied customers while collaborating with product, security, and operations.