Director of Engineering

About UsRare Days is a digital product studio. We partner with category-defining companies to build, design, and launch new products, breathe new life into existing ones, or embed with internal teams to help them scale. We take the time to deeply understand our partner’s goals and end-user needs, which allows us to build incredibly intentional experiences.
We care deeply about technical and design excellence, and we hire accordingly. For 6 years we have worked closely with some of the world's most influential creators, helping them build world class products for their audiences. Our team has built products at companies like Airbnb, Shopify, Amazon, Notion, Apple and more. We bring that same level of rigor to every engagement, regardless of size or stage.
We're a fully remote team based in Canada and are open to candidates able to work within 4 hours of PST. Preference will be given to Canadian applicants.
About the RoleWe are hiring an Engineering Director. This is a senior leadership role for someone who has run engineering across multiple teams at once, and wants to do it somewhere that treats product development craft with an extremely high bar.
The strongest candidates have done this in two settings. Agency or studio leadership teaches you to move quickly, split focus across several projects, and lead people who aren't all working alongside each other. Enterprise or product-company leadership teaches you to hold a high bar on quality and delivery at scale. We want both. If you've only done one, you should be able to show you can operate in the other. Strong technical expertise is a must!
You'll own the delivery, health, and growth of two or more concurrent project teams, and you'll stay close to the actual engineering while you do it. You're accountable for delivery that's high-quality, on-time, on-spec, and true to best practices. Day to day, your engineers do the heavy technical lifting, but you're technical enough to engage meaningfully in the hard discussions, arbitrate the calls, notice when a project is drifting off track, and dig in when that's what gets it over the line. You'll spec and write SOWs for new work, and you're answerable for the technical and engineering rigour of what your teams ship, even when the building is done by others. Our accounts range from single-team creator platforms to enterprise clients running several product-led teams at once, and you could be pointed at any of them.
You'll also represent Rare Days in leadership contexts and public events, so reading a room and holding a point of view with confidence matters. Adaptability, humility, and resourcefulness are table stakes, as no two projects, clients, or developers are alike. Most importantly, you'll have an undeniable passion for engineering and you thrive when you're supporting others in doing their best work.
Core ResponsibilitiesTechnical leadership on the projects you carry

• Ensure sound architecture across your teams, arbitrating major technical decisions with Leads and Staff engineers and guiding project team members
• Take guidance from your senior engineers on tooling, vendor, and infrastructure choices, and be accountable for the final calls, including cost and reliability outcomes
• Hold the bar on security, quality, and performance standards across your teams, and own your teams' response posture
• Drive AI-first adoption across your teams, making sure it's used well and safely, and set the expectation and example for what good looks like

Delivery and team operations

• Drive the overall Engineering org's operations and strategy, from day to day processes to long-term direction
• Stay accountable for keeping the projects and teams on your accounts on track, raising a flag early when they aren't. This isn't a project-management role, but you own the outcome
• Contribute to resourcing and project allocation decisions, forecasting future needs against the client roadmaps and driving the hiring that fills the gaps

Clients and business development

• Partner with the Client Partnerships team to pitch and scope engagements, and write and review the SOWs that come out of them
• Build strong relationships with client project leaders, and hold your own with senior client stakeholders (VPs, directors, principals)
• Act as the point of escalation for engineering matters on the accounts you hold
• Spot opportunities to grow the accounts you hold, make the case for new work internally and with the client, and support the proposals that follow

People leadership and culture

• Manage and grow engineers, Leads, and Tech Managers, who won't always sit on the same project teams they report to you from
• Own performance management for your reports: hiring, evaluation, direct and constructive feedback, and careers
• Foster an open, collaborative, and inclusive environment for the engineering team

What We're Looking For

• 12+ years in software development, including 5+ years in engineering leadership, with a track record of guiding multiple teams through the end-to-end digital product lifecycle
• Leadership experience in both agency/studio and enterprise or product-company settings, or clear evidence you can operate in the one you haven't done
• Enough current technical depth to be assigned to a project and be useful on day one: you can guide the build, make the high-level calls, and go deep on a hairy problem when it matters, without needing to be a contributor. You won't be building this work, but you need real experience in it, an expert-level grasp of software development patterns, and opinions on industry best practices
• Backend production experience in modern languages and infrastructure (e.g. Python, Java, Node, Go, AWS, GCP, Vercel)
• Frontend experience in modern frameworks (e.g. React, React Native, Vue), with a strong eye for design quality and accessibility
• Hands-on with AI-led development environments (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, Codex), and able to set the standard for how a team uses them well and safely
• API design and development, data modelling, and database architecture for large scale platform builds
• Infrastructure depth across messaging, events, microservices, scaling, and security hardening
• A track record of delivering complex engineering work inside large, product-led client organizations, navigating stakeholders with conflicting priorities without letting delivery slip
• You've specified, written, reviewed and negotiated statements of work (SOW) and scope definitions before, and can estimate new work credibly
• You've been close to the sales process before: scoping new work, contributing to proposals, and growing revenue on accounts you already held
• You communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences, and can present to company leadership with credibility, clarity, and confidence
• You've built and shipped several products and/or complex design systems to market in the past two years
• Able to build a POC quickly to validate an idea or a direction
• Resourceful about your own time. You can tell where your hours are best spent as that shifts week to week, and you protect the technical core of the role without dropping the management side
• A passion for developing talent, motivating teams, and guiding engineers toward successful careers

Bonus Skills

• Experience inside big tech or on enterprise-scale accounts
• Experience leading remote, nearshore, or globally distributed teams across development, product, and QA
• Experience building creator platforms, membership tools, media tools, or community-driven products
• Shipping native mobile first products to market

Compensation and benefits

• Generous paid time off for vacation, sick days, and personal time as needed. We actively encourage team members to make use of this time-off policy
• Flexible working hours and remote-friendly culture
• Extended health care benefits for Canadian employees
• Competitive compensation

Rare Days is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, identities, and experiences to apply.
As an organization headquartered in British Columbia, we're required to post the salary range if the position is to be filled locally. In this case the range is $190–$240 CAD. This range may be higher or lower for candidates based outside of BC, and actual pay will take into account the candidate's experience and competencies.