Director, Software Engineering (Partner Platform)

Niche is the leader in school search, dedicated to making the process of researching and enrolling in schools easy and transparent. The Director of Engineering will lead the engineering side of the Partner Experience organization, focusing on enhancing partner onboarding and reporting, while driving alignment with product leadership and championing AI-native engineering practices.

Responsibilities:

• 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
• 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
• 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-driven development (SDD) or similar AI-paired engineering operating models
• Experience in B2B2C businesses with CRM-integrated product surfaces
• Exposure to partner-facing reporting systems, data pipelines, or lead delivery infrastructure