Director, Engineering Operations & Strategy

Description

The company builds AI that lets the physical world respond to people, with the goal of making everyday tasks disappear.

Its work covers parking, where vehicles can enter and leave without stopping, and is expanding into retail and hospitality for millions of members.

The team includes product leaders and engineers working across parking, mobility, and real estate, and the company wants people who build and solve problems.

The company is also committed to an inclusive culture where everyone has a voice and the best idea wins, and this role helps shape that culture as the organization grows.

Responsibilities

• Set and maintain shared processes across the engineering department, such as hiring, onboarding, and training, so practices stay consistent as the group grows.
• Turn tangled, layered operational problems into simple steps you can act on, without waiting to be told what to do.
• Manage a P&L budget of $50M to $100M+ and allocate resources to meet high-level corporate goals.
• Forecast hardware and service costs for key vendors such as AWS and Twilio, track spend, and flag risks or opportunities early.
• Lead strategic engineering decisions, including M&A due diligence and major vendor migrations, working closely with senior executives.
• Get senior leaders aligned on complicated, high-risk initiatives with many stakeholders.
• Keep teams moving quickly, making calls on partial information when the direction is right.
• Use curiosity and proven methods to break down cross-functional silos, question the status quo, and align teams.
• Anticipate operational trends and recommend strategies that favor proactive change over routine upkeep.
• Manage all engineering vendors, including contract negotiation and renewals, performance accountability, and day-to-day relationships.

Requirements

• You will own technology strategy, operations, and strategic problem solving for the engineering organization, with a high degree of autonomy.
• You will manage an engineering budget in the millions, work through very complex problems, lead without formal authority, and build simple, scalable solutions at a company growing very fast.
• You will work directly with senior leadership on M&A due diligence, shared technical processes, and high-stakes operational issues.
• You thrive under uncertainty, take full ownership of results, and combine hands-on technical grounding with intense strategic work.
• 6+ years in demanding, high-intensity environments.
• 2+ years of hands-on engineering experience in software or similar roles.
• A record of pushing hard to finish difficult work, going through obstacles rather than around them. Backgrounds in top-tier consulting, investment banking, or strategic finance often show this, but the trait matters more than the background.
• Proven leadership of a strategic function with significant autonomy, resource management, and ownership of organizational outcomes.
• Ability to earn the trust of technical teams and influence people without formal authority.
• Experience owning budget or resource decisions in a high-growth or complex organization, favoring action over waiting for perfect information.
• Track record of working effectively in fast-moving, ambiguous settings and making sound decisions without complete data.
• Ability to distill complex operational or technical ideas into clear reasoning for senior and C-level stakeholders.
• Skill at turning high-level business goals into concrete execution plans that account for broad organizational impact.
• Proven skill using AI tools and frameworks to improve technology operations, technical evaluations, and cross-functional workflows.
• Not required, but a plus: an MBA from a top-tier business program.
• Not required, but a plus: an engineering degree.
• Not required, but a plus: experience in high-growth technology scale-ups or pre-IPO companies.
• Not required, but a plus: direct involvement in M&A technology due diligence, corporate restructuring, or integration strategy.
• Not required, but a plus: experience with modern engineering workflows, cloud platforms such as AWS, or AI tooling.

Conditions

Office-first model: you must be on-site at least four days a week to support in-person collaboration.

Expected base salary is $233,000 to $270,000 USD per year. The actual offer depends on qualifications, years of relevant experience, distinctive skills, education level, certifications or licenses, and the location of residence or workplace.

An automated employment decision tool may help assess applications against the listed qualifications, and related data is kept only as long as reasonably necessary, becoming part of employee records if you are hired.

Benefits

• Healthcare benefits.
• 401(k) plan.
• Short-term and long-term disability coverage.
• Basic life insurance.
• Stock option plan.
• Bonus plans and other compensation elements, which together make up the total package with base pay.