Director, Engineering

Company: Muck Rack
Location: Chicago
Posted on: April 1, 2025

Job Description:

Muck Rack's Engineering team powers a platform that is meaningfully changing how journalists, PR pros, and marketers around the world work. We're looking for a visionary and experienced director, engineering to lead our Platform and DevOps functions.Reporting directly to the VP of engineering, the successful candidate will have oversight of and make significant contributions to the technical vision and strategy for our platform, ensuring its efficiency, stability, and scalability. Through their teams, they are responsible for the design, deployment, and maintenance of our robust infrastructure, our release processes through CI/CD pipelines, and championing automation, resilience, observability, and other best practices. This role will also involve fostering a security-first mindset, managing budgets, and liaising with stakeholders across departments. As a team leader, the director will build, mentor, and guide a high-performing and multi-disciplinary team in a culture of collaboration, continuous learning, and operational excellence. We value leaders who balance strategic thinking with hands-on technical expertise and can effectively communicate with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.What you'll do:

• Define the technical vision and strategy for our application development efforts.
• Collaborate with, SVP of Engineering, and other technical leaders to align the platform's strategic goals with the company's objectives.
• Lead and mentor teams of engineers, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Own the technical roadmap for the Muck Rack experience, aligning it with the overall product strategy and business objectives. We're not just building features; we're building solutions that move the needle for our customers and the business.
• Drive the design, development, and implementation of high-quality software solutions, ensuring they meet performance, scalability, and security requirements.
• Collaborate closely with product management, design, and other stakeholders to define product requirements and deliver exceptional user experiences.
• Champion engineering best practices, including code reviews, testing, and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD).
• Monitor and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify areas for improvement and drive optimization efforts. We're serious about measuring our impact and using data to guide our decisions. We track how our work affects our customers and the business, and we use those insights to make things even better.
• Contribute to the overall engineering strategy and help shape the future of our technology stack. We're not afraid to experiment with new technologies and find better ways to build our platform.
• Manage team resources effectively, including hiring, onboarding, and performance management.
• Focus on iterative development and continuous delivery: We break down projects into smaller, manageable pieces so we can ship value to customers frequently. We're always looking for ways to improve our development process and deliver updates quickly.
• Outcome-driven development: We define clear goals and measure the impact of our work. We're not just building features; we're building solutions that achieve specific outcomes for our customers and the business.If the details below describe you, you could be a great fit for this role:
  • You're a builder and a leader: This is crucial. Engineering Directors must be experienced leaders who can build and manage high-performing teams.
  • You're data-driven: Absolutely essential for Muck Rack. The platform is data-centric, and the Engineering Director needs to understand how data is used to drive product decisions and measure success, internally and externally.
  • You're customer-focused: You want to understand the customer's needs and prioritize development efforts accordingly.
  • You thrive in a fast-paced environment: Muck Rack is a growing company, and things change quickly, but not without a purpose. You should be comfortable with leading change and leading through change.
  • You're passionate about our mission: If you are genuinely excited about Muck Rack's mission and the value it provides to PR professionals will be more engaged and motivated, we want to get to know you.Interview OverviewBelow you'll find an outline of the interview plan for this role. Please note that this is what we expect the process to look like; we may ask you for supplemental information or require an additional step before making a final decision.
    • 30 min interview with a member of our Talent Team
    • A 1 hour video interview with the hiring manager
    • Peer interviews with the Platform and DevOps team
    • 30 min Q&A with the hiring manager
    • Final call(s) with executive team member(s)SalaryIn the US, the base salary for this role is between $200,000 and $221,000, depending on skills and experience. Total compensation for this role consists of base salary and a quarterly bonus plan. We take a geo-neutral approach to compensation within the US, meaning that we pay based on job function and level, not location. For all other countries, we have competitive pay bands based on market standards.Individual compensation decisions are based on a number of factors, including experience level, skillset, and balancing internal equity relative to peers at the company. We expect the majority of the candidates who are offered roles at our company to fall healthily throughout the range based on these factors. We recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced (or more senior) than this job description as posted. If that ends up being the case, the updated salary range will be communicated with you as a candidate.
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Keywords: Muck Rack, Chicago , Director, Engineering, Executive , Chicago, Illinois