Director, Software Engineering (Partner Platform)

About the role

We are looking for a Director of Engineering to lead the engineering side of the Partner Experience organization - the group responsible for the end-to-end partner journey across two product teams: Partner Quoting & Delivery and Partner Reporting & Insights. The Partner Acquisition & Delivery team owns the platforms and products that answer did the partner receive what they bought - partner onboarding, prospect quoting, and the lead delivery pipeline. Looking ahead, quoting evolves toward a partner-facing experience where partners interact directly with guidance and recommendations on their orders, whether self-serve or in partnership with their account manager. The Partner Reporting & Insights team owns the platforms and products that ensure how the partner sees the value they purchased, and the insights they need to optimize further - platform performance reporting, monthly insight reports, and the insights engine. The forward direction is an "always on" experience where insights surface continuously to help partners optimize strategy and performance throughout the cycle. Together, the organization is oriented around how partners onboard, what Niche delivers, how value is reported back, and how that loop drives retention and expansion. This Director will be the engineering co-lead of that mission - partnering tightly with product leadership to set direction, build the teams, and raise the bar on how Niche builds software.

Responsibilities

• During the First Month:
• Learn about Niche by meeting with various team members to learn more about our company through our Onboarding meetings
• Meet all direct reports and key cross-functional partners; build an initial read on team strengths and gaps
• Get deep on the partner-facing product surfaces, current tech stack, and delivery patterns across both teams
• Understand the partner experience end to end - onboarding speed, lead pacing, platform engagement - and where the biggest engineering leverage points are
• Form an initial point of view on the teams' AI tooling adoption and where the gaps are
• Within 2 Months:
• Present your assessment of the organization's engineering health - delivery, architecture, team org, AI readiness - to the CTO and Sr. Director of Product
• Align with product leadership on near-term technical priorities and any pressing architectural decisions
• Identify the top 2-3 things you'd change in the first half of your tenure and propose a plan
• Begin actively coaching EMs on embedding AI-native practices into their teams' day-to-day workflows
• Within 3 Months:
• Own the engineering roadmap and resourcing for both teams with full confidence
• Have a defined velocity measurement framework in place that accounts for AI-augmented output
• Be actively leading at least one meaningful initiative to accelerate agentic engineering adoption
• Have established a strong operating rhythm with the product lead, CTO, and Sr. Director of Product

Requirements

• 8+ years in software engineering, with at least 3+ years managing engineering managers
• Demonstrated, hands-on experience driving a team's transition to AI-assisted or agentic engineering workflows - building the culture, tooling, and measurement systems, not just personal AI usage
• Track record of shipping high-quality product at scale in a fast-moving, cross-functional environment
• Strong communicator - able to represent engineering credibly to product and GTM partners and translate fluidly between technical and business language
• Experience working alongside embedded data engineers, with meaningful exposure to modern data tooling (dbt, Snowflake, or similar)
• Systematic thinker who brings structure to ambiguous problems without over-processing
• Experience in EdTech, marketplace, or consumer platform businesses
• Familiarity with spec-drive

Benefits

Additional Information

About Niche Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students, by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply. Niche is all about finding where you belong, and that mission inspires how we operate every day. We want Niche to be a place where people truly enjoy working and can thrive professionally.

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