Director of Engineering

Position Overview

• Location Type: Fully Remote, USA
• Job Type: Employment Type (Not Specified)
• Salary: (Not Specified)

Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm building and investing in rapidly scalable technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in three distinct practice areas: healthcare, cyber, and national security. United by a shared sense of duty and deep belief in the power of innovation, Red Cell is developing powerful tools and solutions to address our Nation’s most pressing problems.

About Trase: Co-founded in 2023 by Joe Laws and Grant Verstandig, Trase Systems is AI, Uncomplicated. Trase empowers enterprise leaders to harness the full potential of AI without the associated complexity and risks. We are an end-to-end solution for deploying, managing, and optimizing AI in the enterprise. Our platform specializes in bridging the "last mile" of AI adoption, unlocking AI's full potential while driving efficiency and significant cost savings.

About the Role: This role is for a Director of Engineering passionate about building and scaling high-performing engineering organizations. The ideal candidate excels at creating the structures, processes, and culture that enable teams to deliver exceptional results and has a proven track record of growing engineering teams and driving operational excellence. The Director of Engineering will play a critical role in scaling the engineering organization from its current state to support ambitious growth plans, focusing on building world-class engineering teams, establishing scalable processes, and creating an environment where engineers can do their best work. This role emphasizes people leadership and operational excellence, involving building robust processes, nurturing team culture, and establishing systems for smooth execution as the engineering team expands.

Requirements

• Educational Background: Bachelor's degree in any field; an advanced degree is a plus but not required.
• Leadership Experience: 10+ years of experience in engineering leadership roles, with at least 5 years managing managers and building engineering organizations.
• Scaling Expertise: Demonstrated experience scaling engineering teams through periods of rapid growth (3x+ headcount increase) in high-growth technology companies, preferably in B2B SaaS or enterprise software.
• Operational Excellence: Strong track record of implementing engineering processes, operational improvements, and modern development methodologies (Agile, Scrum, Kanban) at scale.

Responsibilities

• Scale the engineering organization: Lead recruitment efforts to grow the engineering team from 15 to 50+ engineers over the next 12 months while maintaining a high hiring bar.
• Build organizational structure: Design and implement team structures and communication channels that promote collaboration and efficiency across distributed teams.
• Establish engineering operations: Create and optimize processes for sprint planning, project management, resource allocation, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Drive performance management: Implement comprehensive performance review systems, career development frameworks, and promotion criteria that help engineers grow and thrive.
• Foster engineering culture: Champion a culture of excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement while ensuring high employee engagement and retention.
• Manage engineering budgets: Own headcount planning, compensation benchmarking, and operational budgets for the engineering organization.
• Enable productivity: Identify and remove obstacles that prevent engineers from being productive, including tooling gaps, process inefficiencies, and organizational friction.
• Partner with leadership: Collaborate closely with the CTO, CPO, and other executives to align engineering capacity with business objectives.
• Measure and improve: Establish KPIs for engineering productivity, quality, and satisfaction, using data to drive continuous organizational improvements.