VP, Software Engineering New

Guild; Denver (CO); On-site; USD 300,000 - 356,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401k

Vacation policy

Sick leave

Parental leave

Disability insurance

Life insurance

Fertility benefits

Wellness resources

Tuition assistance

Job summary

Guild is hiring a VP of Engineering to lead our product, platform, and foundational engineering teams in Denver with some remote options. You will own how these teams plan, build, and ship, balancing reliable delivery with growth bets that move the business.

You will coach Directors and Engineering Managers, set clear expectations, and build inclusive, high-performance teams across product, data, and AI engineering. Experience with AWS serverless, GraphQL, and AI-native development is required.

Qualifications

• Experience leading a multi-team engineering org at VP level with outcomes-focused accountability.
• Demonstrated people-management of managers, clear standards, and frequent feedback.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and driving to measurable outcomes.
• Strong architectural credibility and balance of reliable systems with growth bets.
• Cross-functional partnership with Product, Design, and Data/AI leaders.
• Experience scaling consumer or B2B2C growth-product engineering or internal platforms.
• Familiarity with AWS serverless stack, GraphQL, and AI-native software lifecycle.

Responsibilities

• Set direction across product, platform, and foundational engineering with a clear roadmap.
• Own planning, release readiness, incident response, and through-put improvements.
• Balance core system hardening with experiments that enable growth for members and employers.
• Lead internal platform and DevOps foundations to keep systems reliable and secure.
• Develop leaders, coach Directors and Engineering Managers, and provide feedback.
• Foster an inclusive, AI-forward engineering culture with sustainable pace.
• Partner with Product, Design, and Data/AI leaders; align engineering with exec priorities.

Skills

Multi-team leadership

People management

Ambiguity management

Architectural judgement

Cross-functional collaboration

AWS serverless

GraphQL

AI-native development

Data/AI collaboration

Tools

AWS Lambda

Aurora

GraphQL

AI/ML tooling

Job description

Guild is bridging the gap between education and career opportunity, helping employers offer education, skilling, and career mobility to their employees. The Guild Career Opportunity Platform empowers top companies to help working adults go back to school, with tuition assistance programs that align the corporate business goals with affordable education programs designed for working adults. Guild's curated network of online learning providers and non-profit universities along with one-to-one coaching and support helps each student navigate the worlds of work and school, and grow their careers in the process.

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To thrive as a company and meet our impact goals, we must cultivate a culture of high-performance. You can read about our culture principles here .

We know managers are often the single-largest driver of employee satisfaction and growth, and our talent is our biggest asset. Because of that, we’ve identified consistent expectations for all of Guild’s people managers —helping you know what to expect from your experience here.

Guild is hiring a VP of Engineering to lead our product, platform, and foundational engineering teams. In this role, you’ll own how these teams plan, build, and ship — balancing reliable, efficient delivery with the growth bets that move the business. We’re looking for a seasoned engineering leader who’s energized by leading at this level, comfortable navigating ambiguity, and focused on driving to clear outcomes.

As VP of Engineering, you will:

• Set technical and organizational direction across product, platform, and foundational engineering — turning Guild’s business strategy into a clear roadmap and putting your teams’ effort where it matters most.
• Own how the organization plans and ships — estimation, release readiness, and incident response — improving predictability and throughput with lightweight process, and clearing the blockers that slow teams down.
• Balance shipping solid, reliable software with placing growth bets — deciding when to harden core systems and pay down tech debt, and when to fund the experiments that open new growth for members and employer partners.
• Own the internal platform and foundational engineering — DevOps, shared services, CI/CD, and testing — so product teams can ship without wrestling the plumbing and the systems underneath stay reliable and secure.
• Lead through ambiguity to outcomes — bring clarity to messy problems, decide with incomplete information, and keep teams focused on measurable impact as priorities shift.
• Develop leaders and talent — coach and grow multiple Directors and Engineering Managers, set clear expectations, give frequent and actionable feedback, and create stretch opportunities so your people do the best work of their careers.
• Build an inclusive, sustainable engineering culture — psychologically safe teams, a modern and AI-forward way of working, and a pace people can keep.
• Partner across the company — work closely with Product, Design, and Data & AI engineering leaders, and represent engineering with executives and key vendors (e.g., AWS, Auth0) to align technical investment with company priorities.

You are a strong fit for this role if you have:

• Proven ability to lead a multi-team engineering organization at the VP level — setting direction across several domains and owning outcomes across both product and platform engineering. You’re energized by leading well at this level and the scope it carries.
• Demonstrated people-leadership as a manager of managers — you set clear standards, drive execution and remove blockers, grow talent through frequent, actionable feedback, and build psychologically safe, inclusive teams.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and driving to outcomes — you simplify complexity, make practical trade-offs with incomplete information, and orient teams around measurable impact rather than activity.
• Deep technical credibility — you can weigh architectural decisions on their merits and earn the trust of senior engineers — plus the judgment to balance reliable, cost-aware systems with room for growth bets.
• Strong cross-functional partnership — you build trust with Product, Design, and peer engineering leaders, and explain technical strategy and trade-offs clearly to both engineers and executives.
• Experience scaling consumer or B2B2C growth-product engineering and/or internal developer platforms in a high-growth environment.
• Familiarity with a modern AWS serverless stack (e.g., Lambda, Aurora), GraphQL, and the tooling that supports an AI-native software development lifecycle.
• Experience leading engineering through an AI-native transformation — building with AI as a first class citizen, agentic workflows, and platform guardrails responsibly.
• Background partnering with Data/AI engineering to ship AI-native product experiences.

We are committed to equal pay for equal work and believe in compensation transparency. All salary ranges are standardized nationwide and will not vary by region. This role offers a competitive total compensation package, including a base salary of $300,000 - $355,950, variable compensation and stock options. Compensation offered will be based on a combination of factors such as experience, competencies, and internal equity.

Posting Date: July 28th, 2026
*This role will stay open for a minimum of 3 days.

Guild partners with the country’s most innovative employers, including Chipotle, Target, Walgreens, JPMorgan Chase, Hilton, Spectrum, PepsiCo, Tyson, and more, to build the talent needed for today and a resilient workforce for tomorrow. Guild helps employers identify, develop, and mobilize internal talent, enabling workers to gain skills for in-demand roles and companies to stay agile.

By connecting employees to real-world learning, coaching, and career support, and providing companies with actionable talent insights, Guild transforms all talent into high-impact contributors and positions companies for long-term, sustainable growth. For more information, visit https://www.guild.com .

Guild is a female-founded, certified B Corp. The company has been recognized by Fortune’s Change the World list (2021, 2025), the Forbes Cloud 100 (2020-2025), Great Place to Work (2022-2025), CNBC’s Disruptor 50 (2021-2024), TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies (2022), Inc.’s Best-Led Companies (2021), Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas (2020), and B Lab’s Best for the World (2019), among many others.

Guild is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let your recruiter know. We currently offer the following benefits:

• Access to low-cost, high-quality health care options through Collective Health and Kaiser (due to coverage limitations, Kaiser is currently only available in CA & CO)
• Access to a 401k to help save for the future
• Vacation policy to rest and recharge
• 8 days of fully-paid sick leave, to take the time to heal and or recover
• Family-friendly benefits, including 12 weeks of parental leave for non-birthing parents and 18-20 weeks for birthing parents; 2-week ramp-up period for when employees return from a leave of 6 weeks or more; as well as employer-paid short-term and long-term disability, employer-sponsored life insurance, fertility and caregiving benefits.
• Well-rounded wellness benefits including free and low cost mental health resources and financial wellbeing support services
• Education benefits and tuition assistance to help your future development and growth

Our home and headquarters in Denver, but some of our roles allow for remote work, allowing us to reach the best talent across the US. Please refer to the job location referenced below the job posting title to determine location. Roles based outside of our Denver office can sit in any of the following 32 states: AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, NC, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI and Washington D.C. State locations and specifics are subject to change as our hiring requirements shift.