Director of Engineering

Company Description

Planned Parenthood Direct (PPDirect) is the digital arm of Planned Parenthood, delivering trusted sexual and reproductive health care via the Planned Parenthood Direct web/mobile app and period tracking via the Spot On app. Our mission is to enable Planned Parenthood care from anywhere — ensuring accessible care for patients on the go and from the safety, privacy and security of the home.

About the Role

We are looking for a Director of Engineering who will lead, elevate, and advance our engineering function during a period of major product expansion and platform transformation.

This person will own the day-to-day health and performance of our engineering team, ensuring we operate with clarity, discipline, and consistent momentum. You will manage engineers directly, strengthen delivery across multiple pods, and partner with PPDirect leadership to guide PPDirect’s technical strategy and support a platform that continues to grow and evolve.

This is a highly hands-on role. You will coach engineers, enforce engineering best practices, drive technical planning and execution, and build the processes that enable the team to deliver high-quality software consistently. You will play a central role in shaping our engineering culture, growing the team, and establishing the foundation for our next phase of scaling.

What You’ll Do

Engineering Leadership & People Management

• Directly manage a team of full-stack engineers (internal engineers + offshore contractors) with varying levels of experience and autonomy

• Provide coaching, feedback, performance management, and professional development

• Establish clear leveling, expectations, and ownership across engineers and projects

• Continue building out a high-trust, accountable, collaborative engineering culture

Execution & Delivery

• Own the full engineering execution rhythm (planning, estimation, standups, reviews, retros)

• Work with engineers to ensure every project has a clear, well-scoped technical plan

• Track progress closely, surface risks early, and ensure no-surprise delivery

• Partner with Product to translate roadmap initiatives into actionable engineering plans

• Improve reliability, velocity, and predictability across engineering pods

Technical Planning & Quality

• Lead engineers through technical scoping, system design, and risk mitigation

• Ensure thoughtful upfront planning, documentation, and architectural clarity

• Drive standards for code quality, testing, observability, and release readiness

• Identify and manage tech debt in a deliberate, strategic way

• Collaborate with leadership (product and engineering executives, along with cross-functional leaders) on platform architecture and long-term technical direction

Process & Operations

• Own and continuously refine engineering processes for clarity, efficiency, and quality

• Strengthen coordination across Product, QA, Data, Operations

• Implement practices that reduce bugs, limit rework, and maintain consistent momentum

• Serve as the operational team leader who brings discipline, focus, and structure to a distributed engineering team

Scaling & Future-State Platform Work

• Help shape and evolve our platform as needs grow and complexity increases

• Assess skills, gaps, and future hiring needs across the engineering team

• Lead hiring and onboarding for future engineers

Who You Are

Leadership & Management

• A thoughtful, hands-on engineering leader who knows how to meet a team where they are

• Experienced managing engineers with diverse skill levels and working styles

• Excellent at coaching, leveling, performance management, and clarifying expectations

• Direct, clear communicator–you bring stability, structure, and confidence

Execution

• A strong operator who drives predictable delivery across multiple workstreams

• Comfortable holding teams accountable and stepping in directly when work goes (or even is at risk of going) off-track

• Skilled at building structure and engineering operations from the ground up

Technical

• Proven full-stack engineering background; able to dive deep when and where needed

• Strong architectural judgment and ability to partner with leadership and technical leads

• Experience with modern web/mobile architectures, scalable platforms, and API-driven systems

Mindset

• Extremely mission-driven and excited about expanding access to sexual and reproductive healthcare

• Pragmatic, grounded, and solutions-oriented

• Comfortable with ambiguity and energized by building and scaling in a fast-moving, small-team environment

Qualifications

• 8–10+ years of engineering experience, including 3+ years managing engineering teams

• Experience managing hybrid teams including full-stack engineers and off-shore contractors 

• Proven ability to drive process improvements and deliver predictable execution

• Strong experience leading technical planning and system design

• Experience scaling engineering teams through substantial growth

• Startup or high-growth environment experience strongly preferred

• Experience with healthcare (telehealth in particular), or complex integrations is a plus

Benefits and Perks

• Competitive salary

• Medical, dental, FSA, HSA, and vision insurance

• Professional development

• Educational Benefits

• 401K match

• Parental leave

• Inclusive team culture

• Wellness Programs

No Recruiters. Must have US work authorization.