Director Software Engineering

Join Harness, a high-growth startup transforming how software is delivered. Our mission is to help 30 million developers ship code faster, more securely, and with greater reliability-fueling innovation and improving the developer experience. Backed by $425M in funding and led by AppDynamics founder Jyoti Bansal, we're recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for DevOps Platforms and consistently ranked on Glassdoor, Forbes, Inc., and LinkedIn's top workplace lists.

We're looking for a Director of Engineering to lead the product which focuses on reducing the developer toil and bringing AI to the forefront of software development practices. It is a hands-on, high-impact leadership role combining product thinking, architectural oversight, high performance team building and close customer collaboration. You'll define the long-term vision, deliver against strategic outcomes, and orchestrate engineering excellence across a globally distributed team.

About the role

In this role, you will be responsible for the strategic vision, technical roadmap, and operational success of a vital product line generating over $10M in revenue. We're looking for a seasoned technology leader with a startup mindset and deep technical roots-someone who approaches challenges like a product engineer and thrives in complexity.

Key Responsibilities

• Execute the long-term vision and strategy for the product, grounded in market trends and customer value.
• Develop a thorough grasp of the product landscape and partner with the product manager to articulate the overall vision.
• Contribute to product architecture and design reviews
• Make high-impact decisions in ambiguous, cross-functional environments that shape product direction.
• Hire, grow, and lead globally distributed engineering teams; foster a high-performance, feedback-driven culture.
• Establish a culture of AI first development practices across the team
• Continuously improve internal processes, cross-team collaboration, and technical scalability across the org.
• Partner directly with customers and related organizations to manage escalations, and ensure adoption success.

Required Experience & Qualifications:

• 10+ years of backend software development experience; 5+ years leading high-performing engineering team
• Proven success in building and scaling orgs in fast-paced, high-growth environments.
• Strong track record in the product building from inception with hands-on architectural and design leadership.
• Expertise in building high-throughput platforms, scalable APIs, and distributed systems.
• Familiarity with GCP, Go, and Kubernetes; strong grasp of the Google cloud-native ecosystem.
• Clear communicator and collaborator across teams, executives, and customers.
• Organized, action-oriented leader who can navigate complexity while driving results and team health.
• BS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Attributes:

• Domain knowledge of developer tooling platform
• Proven track record in spearheading the transformation of software development methodologies
• Experience in leading incident management, including drafting external-facing RCAs.