Engineering Lead, Core Product Engineering
ClassDojo's goal is to give every child on Earth an education they love.
We started by building a communication network that connects teachers, children, and families. Today, ClassDojo is used in the vast majority of U.S. schools and reaches tens of millions of children and families globally. We’re now expanding beyond communication into building the best possible learning experiences for kids everywhere.
We’re a small, high-talent-density team with experience from leading technology companies. We value ownership, speed, and thoughtful decision-making, and we aim to create an environment where people can do the best work of their careers.
We're hiring an Engineering Lead to own one of ClassDojo's product engineering areas end-to-end.
As the Engineering Lead for one of our core product strategy areas, you'll manage the engineering managers in your area, co-own outcomes with PM and Design counterparts, set engineering practices and quality across teams, and act as a demanding internal customer to our peer Platform org.
This is a manager-of-managers role with real architectural and strategic ownership. You'll have 2 to 4 engineering managers reporting in and influence over 15 to 30 engineers indirectly. You will be expected to set direction, not just execute on it.
What you’ll do:
Lead a multi-team product area
Own the product area's company-level objectives and the engineering plan that delivers them
Translate company priorities into product area plans and team plans, in a way that flows both up and down
Be responsible for architecture-level trade-offs across the area's teams; own the technical roadmap and how it balances against product commitments
Represent the product area in s-team forums and engineering-wide leadership conversations
Develop the engineering managers reporting to you
Coach EMs to a higher bar with clear feedback, growth plans, and direct support
Hold the line on engineering practices: flow-based delivery, vertical slicing (nothing >5 days, no project >4 weeks), WIP discipline, Definition of Done, observability, AI-native development
Address performance issues early and clearly; develop managers out of "fine" performance into great performance
Be directive when our values, quality bar, or ways of working are at stake
Drive technical excellence across the product area
Support and drive architecture and systems design decisions across the area; ensure systems are reliable, maintainable, and operationally ready
Take accountability for SLAs and incident response across the area
Make tech-debt and reliability trade-offs on purpose, not by accident
Partner cross-functionally
Co-own outcomes with PM and Design leads (roadmap, quarterly goals, quality bar)
Partner with Revenue, Ops, CX, and other functions as the product area requires
Formalize the interface with the Platform org: planning, committed deliverables, escalation paths
Build pragmatic interim solutions that work today and migrate cleanly to Platform services as they mature
You will be a match if:
2+ years managing managers, with direct reports who were themselves people managers
7+ years total in technical roles, with a strong individual-contributor era you can still draw on
Have owned a product area, pillar, or equivalent multi-team scope and delivered a measurable business outcome
Have built or evolved engineering practices across multiple teams, not just within one
Have hired, developed, and (where necessary) parted ways with engineering managers
Operate with a reproducible structural playbook for changing org topology and developing managers, not just experience
Comfortable making and defending architecture-level trade-offs; can still reason about code with taste
Operate by Candor > Harmony: give the hard message early, comfortable with disagreement
Use LLM-based tools daily and push the org to adopt them
Are an excellent written communicator; can articulate strategy and trade-offs clearly in writing
Nice to Have:
Experience in a multi-product or multi-persona consumer and enterprise business
Experience leading a remote-first, distributed engineering team
Has used AI-native workflows to materially change how a team designs, ships, and operates (not just personal use)
Brings a network of high-quality engineering talent
[1] Some more context:
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We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. In accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. We are happy to accommodate any disabilities or special needs. We are a distributed company, so we hire regardless of location, as long as you are willing to have significant hours overlap with one of the Americas time zones.
ClassDojo takes a number of factors into consideration when determining compensation, including geographic location, experience, and skillset. Salary ranges (United States):
CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT states: $240,000 - $280,000 (USD)
All other states in the US: $204,000 - $238,000 (USD)
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