Director of Engineering

Location: Arlington, VA (Hybrid – In Office 3 Days Per Week)

About [solidcore]

[solidcore] is one of the largest and fastest-growing boutique fitness brands in the United States, with more than 180 studios nationwide and hundreds of thousands of client interactions each month.

Backed by L Catterton, the world’s largest consumer-focused private equity firm, [solidcore] is entering its next phase of growth through new modalities, international expansion, emerging technologies, and continued investment in its digital ecosystem.

Technology plays a critical role in how clients discover, book, engage with, and experience the brand. Our mobile applications, web platforms, and internal systems support a rapidly growing business while creating opportunities to deliver meaningful value to clients both inside and outside the studio.

We are seeking a Director of Engineering to lead our engineering organization, technical architecture, and technology strategy while building a high-performing team capable of supporting the next phase of growth.

The Director of Engineering will lead [solidcore]’s consumer-facing engineering ecosystem, including mobile applications, web platforms, backend services, integrations, and digital product capabilities.

This leader will oversee internal engineers, external engineering partners, and QA resources while partnering closely with Product, Digital, Business Systems, Marketing, Lifecycle, CX, and Operations teams to deliver scalable, consumer-facing technology solutions that drive business outcomes.

The ideal candidate combines strong technical depth with exceptional leadership, product intuition, and business judgment. They are comfortable making architecture and investment decisions, developing engineering talent, managing external partners, and translating complex technical concepts into clear business recommendations.

This role reports to the Chief Digital Officer.

Engineering Leadership & Team Development

• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing engineering organization.
• Build a culture of ownership, accountability, continuous improvement, and technical excellence.
• Recruit, retain, and develop top engineering talent as the organization scales.
• Establish engineering standards, development processes, documentation practices, and quality expectations.
• Create career development paths and succession plans for engineers and future engineering managers.

Technology Strategy & Delivery

• Own the technical strategy and architecture for [solidcore]’s digital ecosystem.
• Define and evolve the long-term strategy for mobile, web, backend services, APIs, integrations, and platform architecture.
• Lead architecture decisions across mobile applications, web platforms, backend services, and cloud infrastructure.
• Develop technology roadmaps that balance business priorities, scalability, speed, and maintainability.
• Evaluate build-versus-buy decisions and make recommendations on platform investments and technical debt reduction.
• Improve engineering velocity, quality, reliability, and operational performance.
• Ensure platforms remain scalable, resilient, and secure as the business grows.

Vendor & Platform Management

• Own relationships with strategic engineering partners and external development teams.
• Evaluate partner performance, technical recommendations, delivery quality, and overall return on investment.
• Recommend the appropriate balance between internal engineering capabilities and external partnerships over time.
• Drive platform evolution across consumer applications, backend services, and integrations.
• Partner with Business Systems and IT leadership on platform strategy, integrations, and long-term technology planning.
• Ensure strong documentation, knowledge transfer, and long-term organizational ownership of critical systems.

Business Partnership & Innovation

• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to Digital leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Translate complex technical concepts into clear business recommendations.
• Partner with Product and business leaders to deliver client and business outcomes.
• Participate in annual planning, budgeting, prioritization, and resource allocation discussions.
• Present technical strategies, tradeoffs, and recommendations to business leaders across the organization.
• Leverage modern engineering tools and AI-enabled development practices to improve team productivity, quality, and speed.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and identify opportunities to improve client experiences and operational efficiency.

Required

• 10–15 years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years in engineering leadership roles.
• Experience leading engineering teams responsible for consumer-facing mobile and web products.
• Experience managing both internal engineering teams and external development partners.
• Strong experience with modern cloud architectures, preferably AWS.
• Experience leading engineering teams responsible for mobile applications, preferably within React Native environments.
• Strong understanding of APIs, backend services, integrations, and distributed systems.
• Proven ability to balance technical excellence, business priorities, and delivery timelines.
• Exceptional leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to operate at both strategic and technical levels, including architecture reviews, technical design discussions, and critical problem solving when needed.

Preferred

• Experience scaling consumer subscription, membership, marketplace, ecommerce, or other high-growth digital products.
• Experience with serverless and containerized architectures.
• Experience with Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) architectures.
• Experience leading organizations through significant platform modernization or digital transformation efforts.
• Experience evaluating build-versus-buy technology decisions and long-term platform investments.
• Experience implementing AI-enabled engineering workflows and development practices.