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.
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 doThis 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
ExpectationsOur 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 skillsYou 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
