Director Of Engineering

As Director of Engineering, you’ll help shape the next phase of Kognitos by growing and coaching a world-class team of engineers. You’ll be an early leader in a high-leverage role: balancing technical depth, people leadership, and cross-functional alignment — all while building in public and for scale.

We’re not looking for someone who just manages delivery — we want someone who builds accountable, motivated teams and partners with ICs to help them grow.

• Build & Lead: Grow and manage a team of engineers (ICs and team leads) focused on delivering product with velocity and quality.
  

• Coach & Develop: Be a force multiplier — helping engineers become better problem-solvers, better collaborators, and better humans.
  

• Partner Cross-Functionally: Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and the executive team to align technical decisions with company strategy.
  

• Drive Accountability: Set clear expectations, foster ownership, and ensure execution meets the bar without micromanaging.
  

• Bring Technical Rigor: While you won’t need to ship code daily, you’ll stay close to technical decisions, conduct reviews, and guide developer tooling and productivity systems.
  

• Shape Culture: You’ll help define what engineering leadership looks like at Kognitos — from hiring to rituals to how we scale values.
  

• Have 5–10+ years in engineering leadership roles, including early-stage startup environments.
  

• Have experience coaching engineers and team leads — not just managing output but investing in people.
  

• Know how to scale engineering orgs from ~5 to 30+ people while maintaining strong execution and culture.
  

• Bring a technical background (you understand modern systems, distributed architecture, developer tooling) even if you don’t code daily.
  

• Can wear multiple hats — strategist, coach, executor — depending on the moment.
  

• Have a bias for action and clarity. You care about outcomes, not politics.
  

• Python, Node.js, TypeScript
  

• AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform
  

• GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Postgres
  

• Frontend: React, Next.js
  

We're at a moment where the right leader can have massive leverage — in product, in culture, and in shaping how people experience engineering at Kognitos. If you want to build something real, with a deeply human-centered team, we’d love to talk.

You do not need to match all of the listed expectations to apply for this position. We are committed to building a team with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.

Kognitos is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.