Vice President, Engineering

Rocket Loans is a fast-moving fintech built on the belief that personal lending should be simple, transparent, and fast. We're part of the Rocket Companies family — which means we have access to proven infrastructure and the culture of a smaller, focused organization. Our product, engineering, and design team is ~60 people strong, and we're building the infrastructure and experiences that define what modern consumer lending looks like.

We're at an inflection point. We've proven our core product. Now we're investing in the engineering organization itself — maturity, craft, career growth, and the kind of technical foundation that lets us move faster and build better. This is the role that leads that.

We're looking for a VP of Engineering to own the health, direction, and output of our engineering organization at Rocket Loans — across origination, checkout, servicing, and infrastructure. You'll report directly to the Head of Product & Engineering and partner closely with product, design, data, and operations leadership to set the standard for how we build.

This isn't a role for someone who wants to manage from a distance. You'll be shaping how we hire, how we grow engineers, how we make technical decisions, and how we show up as an org to the rest of the business. You'll have real latitude — and real accountability.

The right person has done this before in some form, is energized by the organizational side of engineering leadership (not just the technical side), and wants to leave a mark on a team that's ready to level up.
 

About the role

Engineering Organization Health

• Own the engineering org's execution — delivery quality, velocity, and predictability across all product pillars

• Build and maintain the systems that make great engineers want to stay: career ladders, promotion processes, L&D investments, and a culture of craft

• Partner with recruiting to raise the hiring bar and grow the team deliberately

Technical Direction

• Establish and evolve our engineering standards, architectural principles, and platform strategy

• Make or facilitate the high-stakes technical decisions — and create the forums where good decisions get made at every level

• Own our approach to technical debt: when to pay it down, when to ship anyway, and how to be honest about tradeoffs

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Be the engineering voice in the room during product planning, roadmap reviews, and exec-level conversations

• Translate business context into engineering priorities — and engineering constraints into product reality

• Partner with data, ops, and compliance to ensure what we build is auditable, reliable, and regulatorily sound in a consumer lending context

Engineering Culture & Maturity

• Drive the maturity initiatives that turn a good team into a great one: execution metrics, operational discipline, incident response, and engineering excellence programs

• Build the kind of feedback loops — retros, postmortems, metrics reviews — that make the org smarter over time

• Model the culture you want: direct, curious, collaborative, high-bar

AI & Modern Tooling

• Lead our posture on AI-assisted development — not as a mandate, but as a discipline we build intentionally with the right foundations in place

• Partner with engineering leads to identify where AI tooling creates real leverage vs. where it creates risk

• Help set the standard for what responsible, effective AI adoption looks like in a regulated fintech

About you

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering, with 5+ years leading engineering teams at meaningful scale

• Genuinely technical — you can engage at the architecture level, hold your own in system design conversations, and earn credibility with engineers by understanding the work, not just managing it

• Hands-on familiarity with our core stack or close equivalents: TypeScript/Node.js, NestJS or similar backend frameworks, Next.js, PostgreSQL, AWS infrastructure

• Experience navigating platform modernization or migration programs — you know what it takes to move off legacy systems without halting product delivery

• Experience owning engineering culture and org health — not just shipping product

• Strong track record of building and growing senior engineers and engineering managers

• Comfortable with the full stack of engineering leadership: hiring, performance, career development, technical direction, and cross-functional influence

• Experience in fintech, lending, or another regulated consumer product environment — you understand what's at stake when things go wrong

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in consumer lending or financial services (FCRA, TILA, or similar regulatory context)

• Experience building engineering orgs from early-stage or transitional states

• Familiarity with modern AI development practices and LLM-powered product features

• Experience leading platform modernization or migration programs

• Exposure to engineering metrics and observability tooling at the org level

What you’ll get

Our team members fuel our strategy, innovation and growth, so we ensure the health and well-being of not just you, but your family, too! We go above and beyond to give you the support you need on an individual level and offer all sorts of ways to help you live your best life. We are proud to offer eligible team members perks and health benefits that will help you have peace of mind. Simply put: We’ve got your back. Check out our full list of Benefits and Perks.

About us

Headquartered in Detroit, Rocket Loans was established to create the most simple, rocket fast personal loan process. We assembled a top-notch team of individuals combining new, passionate team members with some of the best veterans from Rocket Mortgage to create the most user-friendly lending platform in the world. We have given it our best to create an experience that is best-of-breed in the personal loan industry and commit even more to continuously improving it. At Rocket Loans, you’ll build a career that helps you achieve your professional goals while helping clients get the loans they need to reach their financial goals. We’re looking for innovators and those unafraid to disrupt the status -quo. With an inclusive culture and opportunities to make a positive impact, we’re here to help you foster your career growth.

This job description is an outline of the primary responsibilities of this position and may be modified at the discretion of the company at any time.  Decisions related to employment are not based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, military or veteran status or any other characteristic protected by state or federal law.  The company provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with applicable state and federal laws.  Applicants requiring reasonable accommodations in completing the application and/or participating in the application process should contact a member of the Human Resources team, at [email protected].

The compensation information below is provided in compliance with all applicable job posting disclosure requirements. The compensation for this position is $216,000.00-$457,500.00. The position may also be eligible for an annual bonus, incentives, and other employment-related benefits including, but not limited to, medical, dental, and vision benefits, 401K retirement plan, and paid-time off. More information regarding these benefits and others can be found here. The information regarding compensation and other benefits included in this paragraph is the company’s current, good faith estimate at the time of posting. [Compensation and benefits are subject to modification from time to time as the Company, in its sole and exclusive discretion, deems appropriate.] The Company may determine during its future reviews of the proposed compensation and benefits provided for this position, that the compensation and benefits for such position should be reduced. In no event will the Company reduce the compensation for the position to a level below the applicable jurisdictional minimum wage rate for the position. Los Angeles County and San Francisco Candidates only: qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment per the Fair Chance Ordinance and the Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring.