Dir, Product Engineering

Come join our Goddard Systems, LLC (GSL) corporate team! We are a great place to work and offer many employee-friendly perks and benefits. GSL is the manager of the Goddard School franchise system that supports over 650 schools which delivers a high-quality, play-based learning program to families all over the United States. Our successful franchise business model supports franchisees through partnerships with teams of seasoned professionals who draw over 30 years of business, marketing, IT, franchise, finance, and education experience. Because of this, The Goddard School has grown into an institution that parents and families trust, reaching more than 80,000 students in 38 states – and growing.

Position Summary:

The Director of Product Engineering is responsible for leading the development, deployment, and continuous improvement of scalable software solutions that align with business objectives. This role ensures that engineering teams—both onshore and offshore—operate efficiently, follow best practices, and deliver high-quality, secure, and innovative applications.

In addition to leading software engineering teams, this role also oversees Product Owners, ensuring strong collaboration between product and engineering. The Director will work closely with IT leadership and stakeholders to drive a customer-centric product development approach, establish technical excellence, and foster a collaborative, high-performance engineering culture.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership & Product Engineering

• Define and execute the engineering and product strategy to support business and customer needs.
• Align product engineering priorities with business objectives and ensure a roadmap that balances innovation, scalability, and maintainability.
• Lead the end-to-end software development lifecycle (SDLC), ensuring teams deliver high-quality, user-focused solutions.
• Ensure adoption of modern development practices (e.g., microservices, DevOps, CI/CD, test automation).
• Evaluate emerging technologies and drive innovation in software development.

Product Ownership & Roadmap Management

• Directly manage Product Owners, ensuring product strategies align with engineering capabilities and business goals.
• Oversee backlog management, prioritization, and cross-functional collaboration between Product, Engineering, and Business teams.
• Ensure the seamless transition of requirements into actionable development plans with well-defined acceptance criteria.
• Establish data-driven product decision-making, leveraging customer insights, analytics, and market trends.

Team Management & Global Engineering Operations

• Lead and mentor onshore and offshore engineering teams, ensuring high performance, collaboration, and technical excellence.
• Define team structures, hiring strategies, and career development plans to scale the engineering and product organization.
• Foster a culture of accountability, transparency, and innovation within distributed teams.
• Ensure smooth collaboration across time zones and improve efficiency through global delivery models.

Application Architecture & Scalability

• Establish and maintain a scalable, resilient, and secure application architecture aligned with enterprise standards.
• Ensure applications are cloud-ready, secure, and designed for performance.
• Drive modernization efforts such as cloud adoption, Microservices, API-first development, and automation.

Process Optimization & Delivery Excellence

• Implement and enforce engineering best practices, including agile methodologies, DevOps, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Establish KPIs to measure development efficiency, team productivity, and product quality.
• Partner with Product Management and UX teams to prioritize features and optimize delivery cycles.
• Proactively identify risks, manage dependencies, and remove roadblocks to keep projects on track.

Vendor & Stakeholder Management

• Manage relationships with third-party vendors and offshore development partners, ensuring performance and cost-effectiveness.
• Act as the key liaison between engineering, product, business stakeholders, and executive leadership to communicate progress, challenges, and outcomes effectively.

Experience & Competencies:

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 10 years of experience in software engineering, application development, and product delivery adoption.
• At least 5 years of IT leadership experience.
• Proven experience managing both onshore and offshore development teams.
• Direct experience leading Product Owners or working closely with Product Management teams.
• Strong background in software product development and delivering scalable enterprise applications.

Highly Desired Skills & Attributes

• Experience leading global engineering and product teams, with strong cross-time-zone collaboration skills.
• Franchise experience is preferred.
• Deep understanding of cloud architectures (AWS, Azure, GCP), microservices, API design, and DevOps.
• Proven track record of driving software modernization initiatives (e.g., cloud migration, automation).
• Strong leadership and mentoring abilities, with experience in building high-performing engineering and product teams.
• Agile delivery experience, including Scrum, Kanban, CI/CD, test automation, and DevOps culture.
• Excellent stakeholder communication and executive reporting skills.
• Ability to manage vendor contracts, outsourcing partnerships, and third-party integrations.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a data-driven decision-making approach.