Director of Engineering

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About the Company

Since 1950, Whataburger has been serving bold flavors and warm hospitality. We’re modernizing our digital platforms so guests can order, pay, and enjoy Whataburger—anywhere, anytime—while keeping restaurant operations simple and reliable.

About the Role

The Director of Engineering will lead the technical direction, engineering execution, and digital delivery for Whataburger’s Digital Technology organization, supporting the expansion and modernization of our digital ecosystem. This includes consumer-facing web ordering, mobile apps (iOS/Android React Native), digital payments, loyalty, and integrations with third‑party service and delivery partners.

Reporting to the Head of Digital Engineering, this role oversees engineering managers and cross‑functional teams to build scalable, resilient digital experiences that support Whataburger’s growth and customer‑first mission.

What You’ll Do:

• Leads design and development of highly scalable web and mobile digital ordering experiences for Whataburger guests.
• Drives an API‑first strategy, including oversight of the API platform, governance, standards, versioning, and overall API lifecycle management.
• Establishes and enforces engineering best practices, development standards, code quality guidelines, reliability patterns, and operational excellence.
• Defines, tracks, and continuously improves engineering KPIs: velocity, quality, uptime, technical debt, incident response, system performance, and delivery predictability.
• Oversees integrations with the eCommerce engine, loyalty systems, POS, payments, delivery service providers, and other third‑party platforms.
• Partners with Product, UX, Security, Data, Infrastructure, Restaurant Tech, and business stakeholders to align on priorities, shared roadmaps, and delivery outcomes.
• Ensures strong engineering operations, including CI/CD, release automation, environment management, observability, alerting, and root‑cause analysis.
• Strengthens vendor relationships with engineering partners, implementation firms, and cloud providers to ensure consistent and high‑quality delivery.
• Manages departmental budgets, resource planning, timelines, delivery risks, and reporting for leadership.
• Evaluates new technologies and features, providing strategic and ROI‑driven recommendations to support Whataburger’s digital roadmap.
• Assumes additional responsibilities as assigned.

What You’ll Bring:

Education:

• BS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or related field.

Experience:

• 10+ years leading and managing engineering teams; 5+ years hands‑on engineering experience.
• Proven experience scaling eCommerce web and mobile applications, ideally in high‑volume or retail/restaurant environments.
• Demonstrated leadership of an API platform or API engineering organization, including standards, tooling, security, and lifecycle management.
• Deep understanding of agile development, system integrations, cloud‑native architectures, and mobile/web ecosystems.
• Strong leadership, communication, stakeholder engagement, and technical strategy skills.
• Experience managing third‑party engineering vendors and implementation partners.

Whataburger Perks:

This position offers competitive base compensation, 25% bonus potential, 5 weeks paid time off to start, and additional benefits such as health, dental, vision, and 401(k). Most importantly Whataburger is growing and that means growth opportunities for you and your team, and a culture that feels like family. You’ll be part of a team that’s passionate about food, service, and making a difference in the communities we serve.

Seniority level: Director

Employment type: Full‑time

Job function: Information Technology; Industry: Restaurants

• Medical insurance
• Vision insurance
• 401(k)