Director of Engineering; US Remote

Who we are:

Alignable is the largest online network of small business owners, with over 10 million members across North America. Our mission is to empower small businesses by helping them build trusted relationships and grow through referrals, connections, and community.

We don't just connect business owners—we unlock the hidden potential in their existing networks by revealing second- and third-degree relationships that drive real business growth. Think of it like this: when a software engineer realizes their college roommate's older brother is the hiring manager at the startup they want to join, or when a founder discovers their neighbor's former colleague is exactly the technical co‑founder they need—that's our platform at work, but for small businesses.

We built the technology that makes those invisible connections visible.

Here's the technical challenge we've solved: we're processing relationship data across 30,000+ communities
, building recommendation engines that surface the most valuable connections, and creating trust-based networking algorithms that actually work. This isn't just social networking—it's relationship intelligence at scale.

With 20,000+ new freemium members joining each week, we're entering a new phase of scale where product‑led growth (PLG) is core to our transformation. As a profitable Series C company, we're not burning cash hoping to find revenue—we're scaling proven technology that millions of real entrepreneurs depend on to build their businesses.

Your work here directly impacts the backbone of the American economy. Small businesses employ nearly half of all American workers, and when your code helps them find customers, suppliers, or services through trusted referrals, you're making a tangible difference in millions of lives.

If you want to empower the small business owner through a networking platform unlike any other, let's talk.

We're looking for a Director of Engineering to lead our engineering organization through its next chapter of growth. This is a critical leadership role on our executive team—you'll own the technical strategy, team development, and delivery for ~26 engineers across multiple squads.

This role reports directly to our Co‑Founder/President and has a clear path to VP of Engineering. You'll partner closely with Product, Design, and Data leadership to shape what we build and how we build it—while ensuring our engineering culture continues to attract and retain exceptional talent.

You'll own the health, performance, and growth of our engineering team. This means building strong Engineering Managers, establishing clear career paths, running calibrations and performance cycles, and creating an environment where engineers do their best work. You'll directly manage 3 Engineering Managers and several senior individual contributors, with ~26 engineers in your organization overall.

You'll shape our technical strategy in partnership with senior engineers and cross‑functional leaders. This includes making decisions about architecture evolution, AI/ML integration, platform scalability, and technical debt prioritization. You won't be writing code day‑to‑day, but you'll provide technical guidance through architecture reviews, design discussions, and mentoring senior engineers. Your technical judgment will help teams make the right trade‑offs.

We're integrating AI throughout our platform to bring AI‑powered features to 10+ million small business owners. You'll champion AI adoption across the engineering org—ensuring teams have the skills, tools, and architectural patterns to ship AI‑powered products effectively. You'll also drive AI‑assisted development practices (AI coding tools, automated testing, workflow automation) to accelerate engineering velocity. Whether it's LLM-based features for customers or AI tools that help engineers ship faster, you'll guide the strategy and remove blockers.

You'll ensure we ship high‑quality products on predictable timelines. This means optimizing how squads work…