Director, Software Enginneering

Role Overview Encoura’s success is directly a function of talent.  We are serious about hiring the best talent possible in creating our crew that is incredibly passionate and dedicated to building the next-gen ecosystem of systems and products that will improve the student experience across the entire college and career planning lifecycle.  
We are looking for an experienced hands-on Senior Software Engineer to join a small, distributed team of engineers. You’ll work closely with Engineering and Product Leadership as you build your craft alongside other senior developers in small scrum teams.  You will bring a continuous improvement mentality to the role, always on the lookout for ways to make things better across the company and within your own scope of responsibility.   

A Day In The Life

• Leadership & Team Management: Lead, mentor, and manage engineering teams responsible for our core product, promoting a collaborative and innovative culture. Foster the growth of team members through regular feedback, career development plans, and performance evaluations. Support teams in transitioning legacy systems to a modern technology stack and best practices.
• Product Line Ownership: Oversee the end-to-end development of our product line, ensuring timely delivery of features that provide actionable insights to our customers (universities). Collaborate closely with product management and business stakeholders to align engineering efforts with business objectives, including customer data collection and analysis. Ensure the architecture supports federated GraphQL for data handling and insights delivery.
• Technical Leadership: Provide technical oversight and direction on both modern and legacy systems, ensuring that solutions are scalable, secure, and robust. Lead the migration of legacy application modules to our new standardized tech stack (GraphQL, React, TypeScript, Python, and Node.js). Implement best practices for system architecture, performance optimization, and code quality.
• Strategic Planning & Execution: Collaborate with senior leadership to develop and execute a technical roadmap that balances immediate needs with long-term vision, particularly around modernization efforts. Drive the adoption of modern engineering practices, including Agile development, CI/CD, and cloud-native solutions.
• Process & Continuous Improvement: Lead process improvements to increase the efficiency, scalability, and quality of software development across all teams. Advocate for the adoption of automation, modern DevOps practices, and testing frameworks that align with the company's evolving tech stack.
• Collaboration & Communication: Serve as a bridge between engineering, product management, and business stakeholders to ensure clear communication, alignment on goals, and successful project delivery. Effectively present technical strategies, challenges, and progress to senior leadership and key stakeholders.

Role Progression

• In your 1st month, you will be learning about our business, processes, and a hands-on deep dive into our Encoura platform learning from both developers and product management.
• Within 3 months, you will be participating in product grooming & planning to lead the development team leads in sprint building activities and establishing technical strategic goals for the year.
• Within 6 months you should be taking ownership of the application architecture, production troubleshooting, working on cross-portfolio projects and implementing observability metrics to track progression and efficiency.
• Within 1 year you will be fully immersed in the SDLC, providing project scrum  leadership to your team and building bullet proof products whilst actively engaging in process optimization.

About You

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; Master’s preferred.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 5+ years in a leadership role managing cross-functional engineering teams.
• Proven track record of leading teams through technical transitions, particularly involving legacy systems modernization.
• Expertise with GraphQL (including federated implementations), React, TypeScript, Python, and Node.js.
• Strong knowledge of cloud infrastructure and modern deployment practices (AWS, CI/CD, Kubernetes, DevOps, Github Actions).
• Excellent leadership and communication skills with the ability to manage multiple teams and complex projects simultaneously.
• You are hands on with proven experience understanding the full scope of the platform including front and back-end topology.
• Experience with large-scale data systems, particularly in education or marketing technology.
• Familiarity with data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) as they relate to customer data collection.
• Experience driving innovation in the education tech space or similar industries.
• Experience with SQL Server, Mongo, Aurora Postgres, Snowflake, and databricks.

What Sets Us Apart

• Opportunity to lead the development of a product that directly impacts universities’ ability to engage with prospective students.
• Be part of a company at the forefront of technology in the higher education space.
• Collaborative and energetic work environment with other motivated, career-driven professionals
• Paid holidays and generous PTO policy
• Generous benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, Paid Life and Disability, HSA, FSA,
• Tuition Reimbursement, and 401k
• Flexible working environment, including remote options.

About Us
Encoura’s mission is to empower students and institutions to create meaningful connections so everyone can make the most informed decisions to achieve their goals. Since 1972, the company has evolved its products and services to better represent the link between students and higher education institutions and to create the highest probability of student success.  With the launch of the Encoura platform in 2017, the company provides custom technology solutions that combine Eduventures research, data science, strategic enrollment, and multichannel marketing services to over 2,000 higher ed institutions. The company also offers Encourage® —the nation’s largest free college and career planning program used by millions of high school students and educators nationwide.  Encoura is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) employer. It is the policy of the Company to provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran or disabled status, or genetic information. All applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S.  Encoura endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process or are limited in the ability and need an alternative method for applying, please contact the Talent Team. 
Applicants from California, please review the CA HR Privacy Notice. To review our privacy policy, please click this link: https://encoura.org/privacy-policy/