About the Role:
Smule is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead teams building scalable, reliable, and AI-powered consumer experiences for our global community. This leader will play a key role in accelerating Smule's transformation into an AI-first engineering organization, driving innovation, technical excellence, and operational performance across critical product and platform initiatives.
The ideal candidate combines strong technical leadership, a passion for emerging AI technologies, and a proven track record of building high-performing teams and consumer products at scale.
This is a hybrid role with 1-2 days in office at our Salt Lake City or Bay Area offices.
What You'll be Doing:
- Lead engineering teams and managers to deliver product and platform roadmaps with high execution quality, operational reliability, and team performance.
- Drive Smule's AI-first engineering practices by embedding AI-assisted development, automation, machine learning/deep learning systems, and modern developer productivity tools into daily engineering workflows.
- Evaluate and adopt emerging AI, deep learning, and software engineering technologies that improve product innovation, platform scalability, and engineering productivity.
- Partner with Product, Design, Data, Research, and technical leaders on roadmap planning, prioritization, release execution, AI initiatives, platform modernization, and technical debt reduction.
- Establish and uphold engineering standards for architecture, code quality, testing, security, documentation, observability, and production readiness.
- Define and track engineering KPIs for delivery velocity, product quality, system reliability, operational health, and team effectiveness.
- Build and develop high-performing engineering teams through hiring, coaching, performance management, succession planning, and leadership development.
- Lead operational reviews, incident follow-ups, and continuous improvements to engineering execution, reliability, and readiness.
What We're Looking For:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a closely related technical field.
- 8+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including technical leadership and people management responsibilities.
- 3+ years leading engineering teams, including Software Engineers, Technical Leads, and/or Engineering Managers.
- Strong AI fluency, including practical experience applying AI-assisted development, automation, machine learning, deep learning, or AI-powered product capabilities.
- Proven experience building, scaling, and operating high-volume consumer-facing products and services.
- Strong technical depth in one or more areas such as mobile engineering, backend systems, cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, AI/ML platforms, or platform engineering.
- Experience driving engineering transformation initiatives, including AI adoption, developer productivity improvements, automation, or platform modernization.
- Deep understanding of modern software development practices, including agile delivery, CI/CD, testing automation, observability, and operational excellence.
- Demonstrated ability to balance speed, quality, scalability, reliability, and business priorities.
- Strong communication, stakeholder management, and cross-functional leadership skills.
Bonus Points For:
- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field.
- Experience building AI-powered consumer features, deep learning systems, recommendation systems, personalization platforms, audio/video technology, or creator tools.
- Experience working with globally distributed engineering organizations.
- Passion for music, creativity, and social connection.
Why Join Our Team?
- Flexible time off
- 12 observed holidays
- Comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental, vision, and supplemental insurance, available from your first day of employment at low or no cost to you.
- Employer-paid life and short-term disability insurance
- Employer contributions to employee HSA accounts
- Well-being subscriptions, including Headspace and Wellhub
- Cell phone and internet reimbursement to support hybrid work
- Home office stipend to help create your ideal workspace
