Director, Engineering

Synack’s Penetration Testing as a Service platform manages customers’ attack surfaces by discovering new assets, pentesting for critical vulnerabilities and gaining visibility into the root causes of security risks. We are committed to making the world more secure by harnessing a talented, vetted community of security researchers to deliver continuous penetration testing and vulnerability management, with actionable results. Synack's PTaaS platform has uncovered more than 71,000 exploitable vulnerabilities to date, protecting a growing list of Global 2000 customers and U.S. agencies in a FedRAMP Moderate Authorized environment. For more information, please visit www.synack.com.

We are looking for a Director of Engineering who will be a key leader in our engineering organization, leading the transition from monolithic to microservices architecture and driving feature teams. Your role will be crucial in delivery of OKRs, maintaining high code quality, streamlining software development life cycle, and fostering a productive and positive team environment.

Sounds interesting? Keep reading…

Please note: This is a remote position based in the U.S. We can only hire U.S. citizens for this position due to federal government contract requirements.

Here’s what you'll do

• OKR Leadership and Management: Define and oversee the execution of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that span across backend and frontend development within distributed architectures. Ensure that these OKRs align with Synack's strategic priorities, are effectively communicated, and embraced by the feature teams.
• Formation and Guidance of Feature Teams: Lead the quarterly formation of feature teams, integrating full-stack, UI, and backend engineers to address specific project needs. Provide the necessary guidance and resources to empower these teams to deliver on their assigned OKRs.
• Technical Leadership: Utilize deep knowledge in distributed systems architecture to guide and support development efforts and review technical design to validate their scalability, availability , performance , security and cost effectiveness.
• Hands-On Development: While not a primary focus, be prepared to engage in hands-on coding and conduct code reviews as necessary. Resolve critical issues or develop features directly, ensuring a deep understanding of the technical challenges and maintaining the ability to contribute practically to engineering efforts.
• Agile Methodology Coaching and Quality Assurance: Serve as a coach for agile methodologies, guiding scrum teams in implementing best practices and fostering an environment of continuous improvement and efficiency. Ensure high standards of code quality are maintained, emphasizing robust, secure, and maintainable code.
• Incident Response Leadership: Take charge during incident response situations, providing decisive leadership and direction. Ensure rapid and effective resolution of issues, minimizing impact while maintaining a clear focus on long-term system integrity and reliability.
• Cultivating a Positive Team Environment: Foster an inclusive and collaborative work environment where every team member is empowered to bring their best self to work. Encourage innovation, open communication, and mutual respect within and across teams.
• Strategic Growth and Team Development: Proactively develop top-tier full-stack and UI engineers. Create a strong talent pipeline that supports the dynamic needs of feature teams while fostering individual growth and team cohesion.
• Mentorship and Professional Development: Actively mentor engineers at all levels, focusing on skill development, career progression, and personal growth. Create opportunities for learning and advancement within the engineering organization.
• Collaboration with Product and Infrastructure Teams: Establish and maintain strong collaborative relationships with the product and infrastructure teams.Lead cross-functional initiatives to align engineering projects with broader product strategies and infrastructure requirements, facilitating effective communication and joint problem-solving between teams.

Here’s what you’ll need

• Advanced degree in computer science or a related field.
• Minimum of 15 years of experience in software engineering, with at least 7 years focused on code development and 10 years in increasingly responsible leadership roles.
• Exceptional leadership abilities, including experience in building mentoring and guiding engineering teams.
• Demonstrated experience building software systems that include AI/ML technologies (including LLMs).  Hands on contribution to the design, model development/evaluation, and implementation, especially in the early stages of the team formation.
• Expertise working with large datasets and data processing systems.
• Proficient in any one of the programming languages such as Python (preferred), Go, Rust, or C++.
• Exceptional problem-solving capabilities, with an ability to tackle challenging and complex technical problems.
• Experience with Agile methodologies and the ability to coach teams in Agile practices.
• A strong track record of technical leadership and impactful contributions.
• Proven track record in mentoring engineers and setting technical direction for the organization.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with technical and non-technical teams.

Nice To Have

• Experience in fast-paced startup environment.
• Experience in Cyber Security (Security Testing).

Ready to join us?

Synack is committed to embracing diversity. Our people are our strength.  Each addition to our team is an opportunity to grow and diversify our ideas, experiences, and viewpoints. We strive to be inclusive of Race, Ethnicity, Religion, Sex, LGBTQ+, Veterans, Disabilities, and Age.  Synack welcomes you!

As a candidate, Synack cares about your privacy. Please view our candidate privacy policy here.

This position has responsibility to ensure Synack’s security and privacy posture is maintained.

$200,000 - $280,000 Salary is determined by a combination of factors including location, level, relevant experience, and skills. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. The compensation package for this position may also include equity, and benefits.

For more details about our benefits, please see here. Then for the Employer code, enter: synack