Director, Software Engineering

Director, Software Engineering

At Big Think+, we’re on a mission to empower organizations to unlock leadership potential. We collaborate with the world’s most influential thinkers to create transformative learning experiences that spark curiosity, elevate performance, and inspire meaningful change. 

If you’re driven by innovation, energized by possibility, and excited to help shape the future of workplace learning, you’ll thrive here. Join us—and help create the leaders of tomorrow.

Watch the trailer video on our website to learn more: https://bigthink.com/plus/

About the Role

Big Think+ is redefining how organizations develop leaders. Instead of generic, facilitator-led training, we deliver a world-class library of expert-driven, learning-designed content powered by a platform built to change mindsets and behaviors. Companies around the world rely on us to develop leaders at scale, and technology is at the core of how we do it.

We’re looking for an experienced engineer who thrives on solving complex problems, enjoys elevating the craft of engineering, and is energized by opportunities to influence how a platform—and a team—evolves over time.

As a Director of Software Engineering at Big Think+, you will be a key leader, collaborating with cross-functional teams (Product, Design, Sales, Learning, and other engineers) to drive impactful initiatives. You will ensure technical clarity in decisions, guide tradeoff discussions, and foster a strong engineering culture of collaboration and technical excellence.

What You’ll Do:

Your responsibilities will span technical leadership, team management and hands-on execution.

• Set and drive technical strategy aligned with company objectives, balancing speed, scalability, reliability, and long term platform health.
• Manage and develop a small team of engineers, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development.
• Remain hands on in the codebase, contributing to architecture decisions and implementing critical features and infrastructure improvements.
• Own platform architecture and evolution, ensuring our systems are secure, performant, scalable, and maintainable.
• Lead high impact initiatives, especially those involving complex technical tradeoffs, cross functional dependencies, or architectural change.
• Champion a culture of accountability, craftsmanship, and continuous improvement across the engineering team.

What You’ll Need:

• 10+ years of hands-on experience building web-based applications, with strong, recent work in Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Cloud Platforms (e.g. AWS, Heroku), and JavaScript frameworks (e.g., Svelte, React, Vue).
• A proven track record of leveraging the latest and greatest (often AI) tools to improve the throughput and quality of your team’s work. 
• Prior experience managing and developing engineers, ideally within a small, high ownership team.
• Experience building and maintaining data pipelines and integrations, including ETL or ELT workflows, data transformation and modeling
• Experience in Edtech, working with learning platforms or AI engineering is a plus.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction and lead architecture for complex systems.
• Deep knowledge of secure software development practices, including security compliance and auditing, performance tuning, and scalable multi-tenant systems.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills - able to influence cross-functional partners and explain complex ideas clearly.

What You’ll Get:

• Work from home flexibility: We’ve been remote first since inception.
• Growth and mentorship: Join a supportive, collaborative team with opportunities to grow in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Competitive benefits: Enjoy comprehensive benefits, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, life and disability coverage, 401(k), and more!

Salary Range: $140,000-$180,000

Due to the large number of applications, we will only be contacting you if we would like to move forward with an interview.