Director of Engineering

About Matia

Matia is at the forefront of the DataOps revolution, building a unified platform that streamlines data management from end-to-end. We empower data teams with seamless ingestion, reverse ETL, comprehensive observability, and intuitive data cataloging, enabling faster, smarter decisions with significantly less tool sprawl. Backed by leading investors and trusted by data teams at companies like Ramp, Honeybook, and Lemonade, we're building the future of data confidence. Join us in shaping an innovative product and a high-impact engineering culture.

We are seeking an experienced and highly driven Director of Engineering to lead and scale our R&D team. This is a highly hands-on, deeply technical leadership role. You will be expected to actively contribute to codebases, lead by technical example, and ensure the high-quality delivery and scalability of our unified DataOps platform. This pivotal role requires a leader who can both deeply understand and solve complex technical challenges with code, while also inspiring and guiding a team to build innovative solutions. Reporting directly to the CTO, you will play a critical part in shaping our engineering culture, driving technical excellence, and fostering a collaborative environment that aligns closely with our product vision and business goals.

• Provide Technical Leadership & Guidance: Offer deep technical leadership, actively participating in coding, architectural design, and complex problem-solving to ensure high standards of code quality, scalability, and system reliability.
• Lead & Grow Engineering Teams: Lead, mentor, and grow Matia’s R&D engineering team, fostering a culture of technical excellence, hands-on problem-solving, and continuous improvement.
• Drive Ownership & Accountability: Instill strong ownership, accountability, and a builder mindset within the engineering organization, empowering teams to execute with velocity and autonomy.
• Solve Complex Challenges: Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical and organizational challenges to ensure smooth operations and delivery.
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Collaborate closely with Product and other cross-functional teams to translate business requirements into robust technical solutions and align engineering efforts with company objectives.
• Optimize Processes: Optimize engineering processes, methodologies, and tools to support rapid growth and evolving business needs.
• Reduce Leadership Load: Strategically contribute to reducing the technical and operational load on current leadership, taking on key initiatives and areas of ownership.

We are seeking a true builder and active coder who can lead by technical example and significantly contribute to our engineering culture and output. We value a technical leader with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Must-Haves:

• Experience: 7+ years in software development, with at least 3-5 years in an engineering leadership role (e.g., Director, Senior Manager, or Group Lead managing a team).
• Hands-on Technical Expertise: Proven exceptional proficiency in core technologies like TypeScript, Node.js, React, Python and deep understanding of high-performance SQL/NoSQL database design and K8S.
• Experience working with message queue technologies (e.g., Kafka, SQS, RabbitMQ) to build scalable and reliable data pipelines.
• Startup Scaling Experience: Proven experience having scaled or built R&D teams in startup environments.
• Adaptability & Accountability: Comfortable with ambiguity, quick execution, and high accountability in both leadership and coding capacities.
• Strong Ownership & Leadership: Demonstrates strong ownership and leadership without needing external structure, both in managing teams and driving technical solutions through code.
• Partner Mindset: An open communicator who actively gives and receives feedback, fostering a collaborative environment.

Nice-to-Haves:

• Data Platform/Tools Experience: Previous experience building Data platforms or tools (e.g., ETL, Reverse ETL, Catalog, Observability).
• Cloud Mastery (AWS): Mastery of cloud platforms, especially AWS, including extensive experience architecting solutions using a broad range of AWS services.

Soft Skills: Demonstrated humility and a strong hunger to build, not just to manage.