About this role
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.
At AllSpice, we're building the agile development environment for hardware designers, including a Git-friendly translation layer and automated CI/CD framework for native circuit designs — think GitHub/GitLab + Copilot for electronics.
Read more about our latest Series A announcement here!
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 architectureOwn 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 buildingOversee 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 communicationServe 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 engineeringJump 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 projectsAnalyze 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 stackGitea 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
BenefitsOpportunity 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