Director of Software Engineering Jobs

The Director of Software Engineering is a senior engineering leadership role responsible for building high-performing teams, setting the technical roadmap, and delivering reliable, scalable software. On Rex.zone, this page curates director-level openings across AI labs, tech startups, and enterprise platforms, including roles connected to AI/ML training workflows such as RLHF, data labeling operations, prompt evaluation, model governance, and MLOps. Our intent is informational (what the role is, workflows, skills) and transactional (apply or explore jobs), anchored to Rex.zone for easy navigation. Directors lead SDLC governance, cloud-native architecture, CI/CD, security, and cross-functional collaboration with product, data science, and annotation vendors to improve training data quality and model performance.

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About the Role

As a Director of Software Engineering, you define engineering strategy, own delivery outcomes, and scale teams across backend services, data platforms, and AI product experiences. You partner with product and research to translate business goals into a technical roadmap, establish OKRs, and drive engineering excellence in reliability, performance, and security. You balance build-versus-buy decisions, manage budgets, and foster a culture of ownership, inclusive leadership, and continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities

Own engineering roadmap and execution; lead managers and senior ICs; design cloud-native, microservices, and distributed systems; implement CI/CD, DevOps, and SRE practices; govern SDLC quality gates, incident response, and change management; partner on data and MLOps pipelines; ensure privacy, security, and compliance; measure KPIs across velocity, reliability, and cost; align with product, research, QA, and data labeling vendors to improve training data quality and model performance.

Required Skills & Experience

Proven leadership of multi-team engineering organizations; strong software architecture in APIs, microservices, and event-driven systems; cloud expertise (AWS, GCP, Azure); CI/CD automation and infrastructure-as-code; observability and SRE; data platforms and MLOps; programming in Python, Java, Go, or TypeScript; SDLC governance, risk management, and compliance; stakeholder communication; budget and vendor management; experience with AI product delivery, prompt evaluation workflows, and content safety review processes.

AI/ML Training Workflow Alignment

Directors frequently oversee ML-enabled products and pipelines: RLHF operations with clear annotation guidelines, data labeling QA evaluation, prompt evaluation for LLM behavior, named entity recognition for NLP, computer vision annotation at scale, content safety labeling for moderation systems, and end-to-end LLM training pipelines. Emphasize training data quality, annotation guidelines compliance, model performance improvement, and large language model evaluation while balancing platform reliability, cost efficiency, and privacy-by-design.

Hiring Models & Search Modifiers

Roles on Rex.zone include remote, hybrid, and onsite; full-time, contract, and freelance engagements; senior director and VP-track opportunities; and pathways from staff/manager into director-level leadership. While the core role is senior, we surface related searches such as entry-level engineering manager tracks and internal mobility programs to help candidates plan growth.

Employer Types & Teams

Explore openings at AI labs building LLM platforms, tech startups and scale-ups, cloud providers, enterprise product organizations, financial services, healthcare and life sciences, e-commerce marketplaces, BPOs, and annotation vendors. Teams often span platform engineering, data engineering, MLOps, application development, content safety, and reliability engineering.

Domains & Tech Stack

Common domains include NLP, computer vision, content safety moderation, recommendation systems, and data governance. Typical stacks: Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Kafka, Spark, Airflow, dbt, Snowflake/BigQuery, REST/gRPC, GraphQL, Python/Java/Go/TypeScript, and ML frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow. Directors drive architecture reviews, scalability planning, model monitoring, and ethical AI practices aligned with training data quality and model performance improvement.

Interview Process

Expect a leadership screen, architecture deep dives, systems design, scenario-based management interviews, cross-functional collaboration panels, and an execution-focused case study (e.g., scaling an LLM training pipeline with cost controls and annotation QA evaluation). Be ready to discuss incident postmortems, SDLC governance, roadmap prioritization, and how you balance product velocity with reliability and security.

Compensation & Career Growth

Compensation varies by geography and employer: competitive base salary, performance bonus, equity, and benefits. Growth pathways include Senior Director, Head of Engineering, and VP of Engineering. Demonstrating impact on delivery predictability, platform resiliency, and AI product outcomes—such as improved model performance and reduced labeling cycle time—accelerates advancement.

How to Apply on Rex.zone

Create a profile, filter by remote, contract, freelance, or full-time; select domains like NLP, computer vision, content safety, or LLM training; review employer pages; submit your resume and leadership portfolio; and track application status on Rex.zone. Employers can post director roles, configure screening questions, and manage pipelines with standardized evaluation rubrics.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Q: What does a Director of Software Engineering do in AI-first organizations?

    They lead multi-team engineering groups, set the technical roadmap, and align product, research, and data operations. Responsibilities include SDLC governance, architecture oversight, MLOps integration, labeling QA processes, and ensuring secure, reliable delivery of ML-enabled features.

  • Q: Which skills are most important for this role?

    Technical leadership, software architecture, cloud and DevOps, SRE and observability, stakeholder management, budget and vendor oversight, and familiarity with RLHF, data labeling, prompt evaluation, and content safety workflows.

  • Q: Are remote or contract director roles available?

    Yes. Rex.zone lists remote, hybrid, onsite, full-time, contract, and freelance director roles across startups, AI labs, and enterprises. Filters help you target the engagement model that fits your preferences.

  • Q: What domains commonly hire director-level leaders?

    NLP platforms, computer vision systems, content safety moderation, recommendation engines, data platforms, and enterprise application development—often with LLM training pipelines and model governance requirements.

  • Q: How should I prepare for interviews?

    Practice architecture and systems design, incident postmortems, SDLC and quality gate governance, roadmap prioritization, cost optimization, and scenarios connecting labeling QA evaluation and RLHF operations to measurable model performance improvement.

  • Q: How does Rex.zone help me find relevant director jobs?

    Rex.zone provides curated roles, entity-aware search across modifiers (remote, contract, full-time), domain filters (NLP, CV, content safety), and employer pages to streamline discovery and applications.

  • Q: Do I need hands-on coding for director roles?

    Expect strong technical depth and the ability to review code and design, but day-to-day responsibilities emphasize leadership, architecture, execution management, and cross-functional alignment.

  • Q: What career path leads to director?

    Common paths include Staff/Principal Engineer or Engineering Manager advancing to Senior Manager and Director, with proven impact on delivery, reliability, and AI product outcomes.

230+Domains Covered
120K+PhD, Specialist, Experts Onboarded
50+Countries Represented

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