This role is in-office in Austin, TX. You must be local or willing to re-locate. 

Our client is a well-funded multi-site services / technology company however your industry background, while a consideration isn't as important as your overall leadership and technology skills. This role will include base salary + equity.   

Our client is hiring its first Engineering Leader (Director of VP level) to lead and scale the engineering function alongside Product. This is a hands-on, in-office leadership role for a senior engineer who thrives working closely with Product, Operations, and executive leadership in real time.

You will be a true player-coach, setting technical direction, designing long-term architecture from user and operational requirements, and contributing code on a lean team. We believe this role requires daily, in-person collaboration to move quickly and make high-quality decisions.

This role reports directly to the CEO and is a member of the executive leadership team. 

What You Will Do

1.     Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Own the overall technical architecture and engineering roadmap, balancing near-term execution with long-term scalability.
• Design systems starting from user and operational requirements, not abstract technical ideals.
• Ensure the platform remains reliable, secure, and performant as the business grows.
• Own and evolve the platform’s server and infrastructure architecture (currently Heroku on AWS), including scalability, cost efficiency, and long-term platform evolution.
• Make pragmatic technology decisions appropriate for a growth-stage, tech-enabled services company.
• Own production reliability and incident response for customer-facing systems, communicating clearly with stakeholders during issues.
• Partner with Product and leadership to support enterprise partner requirements, including accessibility and information security.

2.     Hands-On Development

• Actively contribute code across the stack (Python/Django backend, React frameworks: Next.js, some legacy Vue.js).
• Review code, improve engineering standards, and raise overall code quality.
• Step into complex or time-sensitive problems to unblock the team.

3.     Team Leadership & Execution

• Lead, mentor, and grow a small, high-caliber, in-office engineering team.
• Establish lightweight engineering processes that improve velocity without bureaucracy.
• Partner closely with Product to translate roadmap priorities into execution plans.
• Hire deliberately as the team scales.

4.     Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work in person with Product and leadership to rapidly align on priorities.
• Work with Product to support data and AI initiatives that leverage PreFix’s proprietary operational data ensuring they are production-ready, explainable and operationally integrated.
• Communicate clearly with executives on tradeoffs, risks, and delivery timelines.
• Work with product leaders to help prioritize ideas based on their business impact and relative difficulty. 

What You Will Need

1.     Experience

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including experience in a lead / player coach role. This role will manage a small team of 3-4 people. 
• Prior experience as a first or early engineer / engineering leader at a growth-stage company.
• Demonstrated success operating as a player-coach on small, co-located teams.

2.     Technical Background

• Our stack is Python / Django and React frameworks (Next.js). 
• Proven ability to design and evolve system architectures over time.
• Experience building systems that support real-world operations, not purely abstract SaaS platforms.

3.     Leadership Style

• High ownership mentality; treats the business as their own.
• Pragmatic, decisive, and comfortable with ambiguity.
• Low-ego, high-standards leader who enjoys mentoring and building in person.
• Able to set and meet ambitious timelines while communicating constructively when technical realities conflict with target launch dates.

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