Head of Engineering

Location: Pleasanton, CA Salary: $225,000.00 USD Annually - $265,000.00 USD Annually Description:
Head of Engineering
Location: Hybrid - Pleasanton, CA 94566
Department: Engineering
Reports To: Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Compensation: 225-265 plus 25% bonus
Contact: Email resume to David Kellogg, Sr. Recruiter at The Judge Group -
About Client
Our client is transforming the way the global food and perishables supply chain operates. They are rebuilding our engineering organization to be AI-native: smaller, more senior, and dramatically more leveraged. Their mission is to deliver significantly greater output through the intelligent use of AI agents, automation, and exceptional engineering talent.
Engineering is at the center of this transformation. They build the platforms, products, and intelligent agents that unlock efficiency across the entire company and for the customers who depend on us every day.
The Opportunity
They are seeking a Head of Engineering to lead one of our core product domains within our supply chain software platform. In our world, timing, traceability, reliability, and accuracy are not features, they're the product.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an experienced engineering leader who can balance business outcomes, technical excellence, and organizational scale. You will lead a lean, high-performing team responsible for delivering through our AI-powered, agentic software development lifecycle (SDLC), while partnering closely with Product, Security, Operations, and executive leadership.
Reporting directly to the CTO, you will be one of a small number of senior engineering leaders shaping the future of our technology organization.
What You'll Do
Own a Product Domain End-to-End

• Take full accountability for architecture, delivery, quality, performance, and business outcomes within your engineering domain.
• Drive technical strategy and execution aligned with company objectives.
• Make critical decisions that balance speed, scalability, reliability, and maintainability.

Lead a High-Leverage Engineering Organization

• Manage and mentor engineering leads, senior full-stack engineers, and high-potential early-career engineers.
• Coordinate effectively with offshore engineering specialists and distributed teams.
• Develop future technical leaders and strengthen the overall engineering bench.

Drive Delivery Through an Agentic SDLC

• Lead teams operating within an AI-enabled software development lifecycle where agents assist with requirements, code generation, testing, reviews, and delivery.
• Ensure appropriate human oversight and accountability at every stage.
• Maintain a high quality bar while accelerating delivery speed.

Elevate Engineering Productivity

• Champion AI-powered development practices that increase per-engineer output and effectiveness.
• Establish workflows, standards, and operating models that maximize leverage from modern AI tools.
• Continuously improve engineering metrics such as throughput, cycle time, quality, and operational excellence.

Provide Technical Leadership

• Own architecture and system design decisions for large-scale, mission-critical applications.
• Evaluate technical proposals and challenge assumptions when necessary.
• Guide teams through complex tradeoffs involving scalability, performance, reliability, security, and cost.
• Contribute directly when needed through architecture reviews, design sessions, prototyping, or technical problem solving.

Ensure Quality, Reliability, and Operational Excellence

• Build systems that support real-world supply chain operations where outages and inaccuracies can impact inventory, shipments, compliance, and customer trust.
• Establish strong engineering standards, observability practices, and reliability measures.
• Drive continuous improvement in system resilience and performance.

Partner Across the Business

• Collaborate with Product Management, TPMs, Security, Operations, and executive stakeholders.
• Align engineering investments with business priorities and product roadmaps.
• Communicate technical strategy, risks, and progress in a clear, business-focused manner.

Influence at the Executive Level

• Present technical strategy, roadmap progress, and risk assessments to executive leadership and board-level stakeholders.
• Translate complex technical concepts into actionable business decisions.

What Success Looks Like

• Consistent delivery of high-quality software through an AI-enabled development model.
• Significant improvements in engineering productivity, throughput, and cycle times.
• Strong engineering leadership bench with engaged, high-performing teams.
• Successful development of early-career engineers into productive contributors.
• Faster idea-to-production execution without compromising quality or reliability.
• Scalable, resilient systems that support mission-critical supply chain operations.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12+ years of software engineering experience.
• 6+ years of engineering leadership experience managing senior engineers and technical teams.
• Proven experience owning delivery, architecture, and outcomes for a product or platform domain in production environments.
• Strong technical expertise with modern software architecture, distributed systems, cloud platforms, and application development.
• Ability to review code, evaluate architecture, and lead technical decision-making with credibility.
• Experience leveraging AI-assisted development tools, LLM technologies, or agentic engineering workflows.
• Demonstrated success building high-output teams and delivering results with lean organizations.
• Experience leading geographically distributed and offshore teams.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience operating in fast-paced, high-accountability environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in supply chain, logistics, inventory management, warehouse operations, food safety, traceability, IoT, sensor-driven systems, or similar mission-critical domains.
• Experience building or scaling AI-native engineering organizations.
• Experience implementing agentic SDLC practices or internal AI developer platforms.
• Background hiring, mentoring, and accelerating early-career engineering talent.
• Experience in private equity-backed, high-growth, or operationally focused technology companies.
• Familiarity with cloud-native technologies such as Google Cloud Platform, Node.js, NestJS, PostgreSQL, Datadog, and comparable modern platforms.
• Knowledge of food industry compliance frameworks, traceability requirements, or FSMA regulations.

Why Join?

• Help redefine how engineering teams operate in the age of AI.
• Lead a high-impact organization responsible for critical products used across the food supply chain.
• Shape the future of an AI-native engineering culture.
• Partner directly with executive leadership and influence company-wide technology strategy.
• Work with exceptional engineers solving complex, real-world problems with measurable business impact.

If you're excited about building high-performing engineering teams, leveraging AI to increase engineering productivity, and leading mission-critical software platforms that power global supply chains, we'd love to hear from you.
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