Director/VP of Software

Help define the future of hardware development by building a collaboration platform for circuit designs, enabling the next generation of smart vehicles, IoT devices, rockets, medical devices, robotics, and much more. At AllSpice, we're building the agile development environment for hardware designers, including a Git-friendly translation layer and automated CI/CD framework for native circuit designs — think GitHub/GitLab + Copilot for electronics. As Director/VP of Software, you will own AllSpice's product development strategy and execution while building and leading a growing engineering organization. This is a hands‑on leadership role: roughly 60% management and strategic work, 40% individual contribution, reporting directly to the CTO. With ~3 technical team leads under your wing today, you need to be equally comfortable whiteboarding system architecture and jumping into a codebase alongside an engineer to solve difficult problems. If you are passionate about building great software, growing high‑performing teams, and translating customer needs into shipped product, this role is for you. What you'll do This is a high‑impact role that comes with significant autonomy and requires a self‑driven, strategic, and collaborative leader. You will own product development across the full stack — from our Go back‑end and Rust parsing layer to our Vue/TypeScript front‑end. Strategic leadership and architecture Own AllSpice's product development roadmap in close partnership with the CTO and Product Management Make architectural decisions that balance speed, scalability, and technical quality across multiple teams Align engineering priorities with business goals and customer needs, translating product requirements into clear technical plans Evaluate build‑vs‑buy decisions and manage technical debt strategically People management and team building Oversee and mentor ~5 technical team leads, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement Hire, develop, and retain top engineering talent as the organization scales Set team goals, define development processes, and drive operational cadence (sprints, standups, retrospectives) Create growth paths for individual contributors and managers alike Participate in code reviews, architecture discussions, and incident response when needed Cross‑functional communication Serve as the primary connector between technical teams (Platform, Parsing, GenAI, Front‑end), facilitating alignment and removing blockers Partner closely with Infrastructure to ensure smooth deployments, performance, and reliability of production systems Work with Customer Success and Sales to understand customer pain points and feed insights back into the development process Represent Engineering in cross‑functional planning, providing realistic timelines and trade‑off analysis Hands‑on engineering Jump in with engineers to debug, prototype, and solve complex problems when needed — especially in areas spanning multiple teams Drive end‑to‑end web performance analysis and optimization across the stack Maintain a high standard of technical quality through architecture guidance, code review, and mentorship Engage with open‑source communities used in our software to upstream relevant changes and influence key decisions Example projects Analyze and improve end‑to‑end web performance: from server response times through rendering of complex CAD documents (100k+ elements) Lead the development of a 3D rendering engine for PCBs Architect scalable APIs and data models for CAD documents stored in Git repositories Drive expansion of ECAD format support (e.g., LTSpice, KiCad, additional formats) Guide the GenAI/DRCY team on integrating AI‑powered design review deeper into the product, including PCB analysis and extended knowledge repositories Oversee implementation of cross‑probing between schematic and PCB views Improve the snippet and diff rendering pipeline for accuracy and performance Our stack Gitea application soft fork Go [server‑side] Vue/TypeScript front‑end Rust back‑end parsing layer for ECAD files (nom for binary parsing, Criterion for benchmarking) Intermediate data in JSON schema, exported to SVG for rendering Playwright for e2e testing GitHub Actions for CI/CD Docker Swarm & Terraform for deployment AWS PostgreSQL Expectations Our ideal candidate has: 8+ years of software engineering experience, with significant depth in web application development 2+ years of people management experience (hiring, mentoring, performance management) Demonstrated ability to lead cross‑functional engineering teams and drive product delivery end‑to‑end Experience aligning business and customer needs with technical solutions and capabilities Strong architectural instincts — you can operate at the high level and dive deep into implementation details Project management skills with the ability to lead initiatives from engineers to customers Comfort with ambiguity and a high degree of autonomy Bachelor's degree or higher in a technology‑related field (preference, not required) Availability to work out of our flex offices in San Francisco or Boston 1–2 days per week Relevant skills You don't need to check every box, but the more of these you bring, the better: Languages and frameworks Go, TypeScript, Vue, Rust Common web architectures and interfaces SVG, CSS selectors (for design rendering) Infrastructure and tooling Docker and Kubernetes CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Playwright) PostgreSQL administration AWS services Engineering leadership Hiring, mentoring, and building engineering teams Agile project management (Jira, Notion, or similar) Customer‑facing technical communication Open‑source community engagement Domain knowledge (nice to have) Hardware / CAD / ECAD experience Algorithms, data structures, and performance optimization Parsing, rendering, or graphics programming AI/ML integration in product workflows Benefits Opportunity to make a large impact at an executive level Supportive and smart colleagues Flexible work Competitive salary and equity Health, dental, and vision benefits Generous PTO Home office stipend Relocation package #J-18808-Ljbffr Allspice, Inc.