Director of Engineering

About Blitzy Blitzy is a Cambridge, MA based AI software development platform on a mission to revolutionize the software development life cycle by autonomously building custom software to unlock the next industrial revolution. We’re transforming how enterprises build software, turning enterprise requirements into production-ready code with an agentic software development platform that can autonomously execute 80% of the quantum of software development work. We’re backed by multiple tier 1 investors, and have proven success as founders of previous start-ups. Location: 1 Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA 02139 (In-person) Compensation: $250,000 – $330,000 (base + equity, commensurate with experience and demonstrated leadership impact) The Role We are hiring a Director of Engineering to lead and scale the engineering teams responsible for Blitzy’s most critical production systems. Reporting directly to the CTO, you will own engineering execution across our backend platform, infrastructure, and AI product surface — directly managing and developing a team of Principal and Senior Engineers. This is a hands-on leadership role. You will be expected to stay close to the code, make credible technical decisions, and hold the bar on delivery quality. We are looking for a leader who knows how to get great engineers to do their best work, remove what gets in their way, and drive outcomes that matter to customers. What Success Looks Like - Engineering teams under your leadership ship reliably, predictably, and at high quality — without constant re-prioritization or rework - You reduce delivery friction through clear ownership, smart process, and tight feedback loops - Principal and Senior Engineers are unblocked, growing, and doing the best work of their careers - You maintain a close enough pulse on the technical work to identify risk early and course-correct before it compounds - You translate product and business priorities into clear engineering roadmaps with realistic commitments - Incident response is coordinated, post-mortems lead to real change, and reliability improves over time - You are a trusted partner to the CTO, Leadership team, and Customer Success — communicating clearly and proactively - You build a team culture of accountability, craftsmanship, and speed without sacrificing durability Areas of Ownership - Engineering execution across backend platform, infrastructure, and AI-powered systems - Direct management of Principal Engineers and Senior Engineers across platform teams - Engineering roadmap planning, sprint execution, and delivery forecasting in close partnership with Leadership - Hiring, onboarding, and leveling decisions for the engineering organization - Engineering culture: code review standards, incident response, technical documentation, and team rituals - Cross-functional communication: translating engineering status, risk, and tradeoffs for non-technical stakeholders - Operational reliability: uptime, SLA adherence, and production incident coordination across teams Required Experience - 5+ years of engineering management experience, including direct management of senior or principal-level engineers - Prior experience as a hands-on engineer with deep backend expertise — you can read and reason about production code - Demonstrated track record of shipping complex software products on time and at scale - Experience leading engineering teams building and operating cloud-native, distributed systems in production - Strong technical fluency across most of the following: - - Backend: Python (primary), microservices, REST and gRPC APIs - Cloud & Infrastructure: GCP,, AWS or Azure; Kubernetes; Terraform - Databases: PostgreSQL, NoSQL systems; vector and graph databases a plus - AI/LLM Systems: familiarity with LLM-powered product development and evaluation pipelines 1. Experience hiring, leveling, and developing engineers in a fast-moving startup or high-growth company 2. Ability to engage credibly in technical design discu