Director of Engineering

About CoLab

At CoLab, we help mechanical engineering teams bring life-changing products to market years sooner.

CoLab is a cloud based platform for engineering design review. We make it easy for subject matter experts (SMEs) across your business to access, evaluate, and comment on 2D drawings and 3D models. Our built-in AI peer checker, AutoReview, scans designs for common errors or non-compliance with your standards and guidelines. AutoReview creates markups and comments on your files, in context – just like a human checker.

With CoLab, human SMEs and AI work together to help you make better decisions and improve designs faster. We automatically capture knowledge from across your global business that would otherwise be buried in emails, spreadsheets, slide decks, and unknown locations in Sharepoint or PLM. Then, we make sure every lesson learned and every design guideline is applied exactly when it matters.

Companies like Johnson Controls, Komatsu, Schaeffler, and Polaris have launched products 40% faster, cut BOM costs by 50%, and reduced quality escapes by 15% in 1 year.

About the Role

We’re hiring a Director of Engineering to own several critical areas of Product Development within CoLab, including:

• CAD and PLM Integrations

• Productivity Tool Integrations

• CAD Visualization Capabilities

• Etc

In this role you will lead the Engineering Managers for several product development teams, set a clear technical and execution strategy, and ensure we reliably ship high-quality capabilities that meet enterprise expectations for security, performance, and maintainability.

You’ll operate as a senior people-and-delivery leader: aligning product and engineering priorities, translating strategy into roadmaps and execution plans, building strong engineering management practices, and strengthening cross-functional partnerships across Product, Design, Customer/Implementation, Security, and other engineering teams.

You’ll also be in the details with the team, working alongside them to solve problems and remove blockers. You’ll also interface directly with customers, particular in the context of CAD/PLM integration deployments and troubleshooting.

Job Responsibilities

• Own outcomes for several product development teams: delivery predictability, quality, uptime/reliability (where applicable), and customer impact

• Support Engineering Managers in working with Product and Design to define strategy and roadmaps, and convert them into sequenced execution plans with clear milestones, risks, and resourcing

• Continuously improve operating rhythms (planning, prioritization, retros, on-call/incident practices as applicable, release management, etc) that work best for each team

• Drive effective cross-team coordination, especially where the teams intersect with core platform/infra, security, and customer implementations

• Lead, coach, and develop the Engineering Managers for several teams; set expectations for high-quality management, planning, and technical leadership

• Support hiring and team design across both orgs (headcount planning, role definitions, leveling, interview loops, onboarding)

• Manage performance effectively and fairly: goal-setting, feedback, growth plans, and recognition

• Guide technical strategy for integrations and viewing capabilities, balancing short-term delivery needs with long-term platform health. Set and uphold technical standards across both domains: architecture consistency, API/design patterns, security and privacy expectations, observability, and maintainability

• Act as an escalation point for complex technical and delivery issues, unblocking teams while empowering EMs and senior engineers

• Partner with Customer-facing teams (e.g., implementations, support, solutions) to ensure enterprise requirements are met and delivery aligns with customer timelines.

• Communicate progress and tradeoffs clearly to the VP Engineering and leadership peers: status, risks, dependencies, and mitigation plans

Qualifications

• 8+ years in software engineering, including 3+ years overseeing engineering managers and multiple teams

• Demonstrated success owning delivery for customer-facing product teams with meaningful dependencies and stakeholder complexity

• Strong people leadership: coaching managers, building healthy teams, hiring effectively, and developing talent

• Solid technical judgment and the ability to guide architecture and system design through influence (you don’t need to be the primary implementer)

• Excellent communication skills: concise written updates, clear decision-making, and strong alignment-building across functions

Bonus: Experience working with CAD or PLM systems, file translation pipelines, technical support or forward deployed engineering.

Extra Details

• Full-time, permanent role with competitive compensation and stock options

• Extended health benefits and unlimited paid vacation

• Remote-first across North America, with quarterly in-person collaboration

Equity Note

Frequently cited statistics show that people who identify with historically marginalized groups are likely to apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. We encourage you to help us break that statistic and apply even if you don’t meet every single qualification—your potential is what matters most to us.