VP, Software Engineering

Role Description

Guild is hiring a VP of Engineering to lead our product, platform, and foundational engineering teams. In this role, you’ll own how these teams plan, build, and ship — balancing reliable, efficient delivery with the growth bets that move the business. We’re looking for a seasoned engineering leader who’s energized by leading at this level, comfortable navigating ambiguity, and focused on driving to clear outcomes.

• Set technical and organizational direction across product, platform, and foundational engineering — turning Guild’s business strategy into a clear roadmap and putting your teams’ effort where it matters most.
• Own how the organization plans and ships — estimation, release readiness, and incident response — improving predictability and throughput with lightweight process, and clearing the blockers that slow teams down.
• Balance shipping solid, reliable software with placing growth bets — deciding when to harden core systems and pay down tech debt, and when to fund the experiments that open new growth for members and employer partners.
• Own the internal platform and foundational engineering — DevOps, shared services, CI/CD, and testing — so product teams can ship without wrestling the plumbing and the systems underneath stay reliable and secure.
• Lead through ambiguity to outcomes — bring clarity to messy problems, decide with incomplete information, and keep teams focused on measurable impact as priorities shift.
• Develop leaders and talent — coach and grow multiple Directors and Engineering Managers, set clear expectations, give frequent and actionable feedback, and create stretch opportunities so your people do the best work of their careers.
• Build an inclusive, sustainable engineering culture — psychologically safe teams, a modern and AI-forward way of working, and a pace people can keep.
• Partner across the company — work closely with Product, Design, and Data & AI engineering leaders, and represent engineering with executives and key vendors (e.g., AWS, Auth0) to align technical investment with company priorities.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to lead a multi-team engineering organization at the VP level — setting direction across several domains and owning outcomes across both product and platform engineering.
• Demonstrated people-leadership as a manager of managers — you set clear standards, drive execution and remove blockers, grow talent through frequent, actionable feedback, and build psychologically safe, inclusive teams.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and driving to outcomes — you simplify complexity, make practical trade-offs with incomplete information, and orient teams around measurable impact rather than activity.
• Deep technical credibility — you can weigh architectural decisions on their merits and earn the trust of senior engineers — plus the judgment to balance reliable, cost-aware systems with room for growth bets.
• Strong cross-functional partnership — you build trust with Product, Design, and peer engineering leaders, and explain technical strategy and trade-offs clearly to both engineers and executives.

Requirements

• Experience scaling consumer or B2B2C growth-product engineering and/or internal developer platforms in a high-growth environment.
• Familiarity with a modern AWS serverless stack (e.g., Lambda, Aurora), GraphQL, and the tooling that supports an AI-native software development lifecycle.
• Experience leading engineering through an AI-native transformation — building with AI as a first class citizen, agentic workflows, and platform guardrails responsibly.
• Background partnering with Data/AI engineering to ship AI-native product experiences.

Benefits

• Access to low-cost, high-quality health care options through Collective Health and Kaiser (due to coverage limitations, Kaiser is currently only available in CA & CO).
• Access to a 401k to help save for the future.
• Vacation policy to rest and recharge.
• 8 days of fully-paid sick leave, to take the time to heal and or recover.
• Family-friendly benefits, including 12 weeks of parental leave for non-birthing parents and 18-20 weeks for birthing parents; 2-week ramp-up period for when employees return from a leave of 6 weeks or more; as well as employer-paid short-term and long-term disability, employer-sponsored life insurance, fertility and caregiving benefits.
• Well-rounded wellness benefits including free and low cost mental health resources and financial wellbeing support services.
• Education benefits and tuition assistance to help your future development and growth.
• Our home and headquarters in Denver, but some of our roles allow for remote work, allowing us to reach the best talent across the US.