VP of Engineering

Job Summary

Orbis is hiring a Vice President of Engineering to lead our engineering organization through its most significant period of growth. You will lead our engineering directors and managers, hire and develop an exceptional technical workforce, and shape a culture where engineers do their best work while the organization triples in size over the next year.

You will report directly to the CTO and serve as the senior engineering leader accountable for how Orbis builds: the people, the leaders, the culture, the delivery engine, and the engineering standards. The CTO sets technical vision and architecture direction; you own the organization and operating model that turns that vision into reliable delivery at scale.

This role is built for a leader who has done it before in a small, fast-moving company, and who can bring structure without bureaucracy. You will be a visible, trusted voice with engineers, executives, and government customers alike. Our engineers work remotely across the United States and its territories, including Puerto Rico, so building ways of working that span time zones is central to this role.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop engineering leadership. Own the engineering leadership team, including directors and managers. Set clear expectations, coach with candor, and build a leadership bench that scales with the company.
• Build and retain a high-caliber workforce. Own the engineering workforce plan, hiring strategy, and interview process, and apply our career ladder consistently, to triple the team without lowering the bar. Make timely, fair decisions on performance and staffing.
• Shape the engineering culture. Define working norms, career paths, recognition, and feedback loops around how our engineers actually want to work, and protect that culture as we grow.
• Communicate with clarity at every level. Set direction and context for the whole engineering organization, and represent engineering to the executive team, the board as needed, and customers. Translate technical trade-offs into business and mission terms.
• Own delivery and accountability. Partner with product leadership to turn priorities into predictable delivery, balancing roadmap commitments, technical debt, architecture, and capacity across a growing portfolio. Establish the metrics and operating rhythm that show how engineering is performing.
• Set technical direction and consolidate platforms. Working with the CTO, rationalize the toolchain, development environments, and shared infrastructure across our Rust, Go, TypeScript, and React codebases and our AWS, GCP, and Cloudflare environments to reduce duplication and speed delivery.
• Scale skills and knowledge. Put documentation standards, shared engineering practices, onboarding, and training in place so knowledge lives in the organization rather than with individuals.
• Hold the bar on security and quality. Ensure engineering practices meet the security, compliance, and reliability standards our government and allied customers require, including deployments onto small form factor computers in constrained and disconnected environments.
• Lead a remote team across U.S. time zones and territories. Set core collaboration hours, meeting cadences, and on-call rotations that work across the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and other territories, with written, asynchronous communication as the default.
• Partner across the business. Work closely with the CTO, Product, Security, People, Business Operations, and IT on budget, headcount, vendor decisions, and company-level planning.
• Travel up to 25% to our McLean, VA headquarters, team gatherings, and customer sites.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading engineering organizations through other managers, with at least 3 years at the director level or above.
• Prior experience as an engineering leader at a small or early-stage company (for example, under 200 employees), including operating with limited process and building structure as the company scales.
• Demonstrated success as a people leader: developing managers, building diverse and high-performing teams, handling difficult performance and staffing decisions, and retaining top talent through rapid growth.
• Proven success scaling an engineering organization through rapid growth, including building hiring pipelines and interview processes.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication, with a record of setting direction, giving candid feedback, and explaining engineering trade-offs to executives, boards, and customers.
• Proven experience leading a fully remote engineering organization across multiple time zones, including schedules, core hours, meeting cadences, and on-call coverage.
• Hands-on technical background in modern software delivery (cloud-native architecture, distributed systems, CI/CD, and DevSecOps), including production experience with at least one of Rust, Go, or TypeScript and with AWS, GCP, or Cloudflare, deep enough to make sound architecture decisions and earn the trust of senior engineers.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance.
• Ability to travel up to 25%.

Desired Qualifications

• Hands-on experience across our stack: Rust, Go, TypeScript, and React, deployed on AWS, GCP, and Cloudflare (including Workers).
• Experience shipping software to small form factor computers and other edge hardware, including resource-constrained or disconnected deployments.
• Experience leading engineering for products delivered to the DoD, Intelligence Community, or allied governments, including accredited, air-gapped, or edge environments.
• Active TS/SCI clearance.
• Experience building or scaling data platforms, data integration, or AI/ML products in production.
• Experience leading a toolchain consolidation, platform engineering, or developer-experience initiative across multiple teams.
• Experience managing an engineering budget and contributing to company-level strategy.
• Advanced degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field.

Physical Requirements

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer
• Participation in virtual and in-person meetings
• Ability to attend planned meetings and/or work in classified spaces for extended periods within the United States and U.S. territories