What does a Director of Engineering do?

While there are a number of things I’m responsible for, there are two things that take higher priority than everything else.

The first is empowering the engineers I manage to make the biggest impact possible for the company while reaching their professional development goals. I believe the two of these are highly correlated to job satisfaction. thredUP’s emphasis on professional development is a big reason why it’s been over two years since our Web Engineering Team experienced any turnover.

The second is consistently delivering projects on-time with quality. If a project is behind schedule or the website is experiencing issues or an engineer is disheartened, I will refocus energy from other efforts (hiring, planning, etc.) to figure out how to get obstacles out of the way to get everything back on track.

If the business is healthy, our engineering efforts are on-time, and the teams are motivated, challenged, and moving towards their professional development goals, then all is right in my world.