Senior Director, Consumer Engineering

What the Role Is

As the Senior Director of Consumer Engineering, this is a chance to accelerate what's already working at a company with momentum, resources, and clarity of purpose. You'll lead the teams building the registry, shop, and consumer experiences that millions of families depend on. You'll shape how we evolve these core products while exploring new ways to serve parents through expanded business lines and deeper engagement.

Leading four front-line engineering managers and a team of 30+ engineers across web, iOS, and Android, you'll be responsible for the technical foundation that turns confusion and anxiety into confidence and joy. When a sleep-deprived parent opens our app at 2am searching for the right bottle, when someone discovers the perfect gift through our registry, when a first-time mom finds the article that answers her burning question, or when a family seamlessly shops from our curated selection—that's your team's work making a real difference in people's lives.

You'll form a true product triad with the VP of Consumer Product and Senior Director of Design—three equal partners shaping Babylist's future together. Engineering won't just execute the vision; you'll be instrumental in defining it. Reporting to the CTO, you'll balance the bold vision of where Babylist needs to go with the pragmatic execution of getting there, ensuring we're building both the right things and building things right.

This isn't just about scaling infrastructure or shipping features—it's about empowering families during one of life's most transformative experiences.

Who You Are

• Experienced Leader: 12+ years building and leading engineering teams at consumer technology companies, with 8+ years in leadership roles. You've been through multiple stages of growth and know what it takes to scale both systems and teams.
• Consumer Product Expertise: You understand what makes consumer products truly delightful—from lightning-fast mobile experiences to thoughtfully designed web interfaces. You've scaled products to millions of users and have strong instincts for what creates sticky, valuable experiences that parents will rely on daily.
• Business & Product Acumen: You connect the dots between business model, product strategy, and engineering investment. You're a strong thought partner to Product and Design, bringing sharp judgment about where to place bets, which new opportunities to pursue, and how to evolve core products from very good to great. You have strong opinions on what will drive value for families navigating parenthood.
• Strategic Operator: You think ahead—anticipating technical challenges, capacity needs, and architectural inflection points before they become blockers. You make pragmatic decisions that balance moving fast with building for the long term, especially important as we expand into new business lines while strengthening our core.
• Intentionally Focused: You're ruthless about focus. You align engineering effort to business impact, drive clarity on what matters most, and protect your teams from distraction. When you commit to something, you deliver—and you help the organization say no to everything else so we can go deep on what moves the needle.
• Clarity & Communication: You bring precision and context to every conversation, whether you're presenting roadmaps to executives or explaining tradeoffs to engineers. You cut through ambiguity, create alignment across a distributed team, and ensure everyone understands not just what we're building, but why it matters for our customers and business.
• Cultural Leader: You're known for building places where engineers do their best work. You recruit exceptional talent, develop strong leaders, and create cultures of ownership, excellence, and continuous learning. People grow under your leadership and are energized by the opportunity to build something meaningful.
• Change Leadership: You lead teams confidently through growth and evolution—whether it's new processes, org changes, or expanding into new product areas. You bring clarity when things feel uncertain and help people see the path forward, maintaining momentum and morale even when the landscape is shifting.
• Systems Thinker: You have deep knowledge of what it takes to run reliable, performant consumer systems at scale—observability, monitoring, incident response, and the practices that keep the lights on while teams ship fast. You know how to build systems that parents can depend on during life's most important moments.
• Bias for Action: You know when to push through analysis paralysis and drive decisions. You're comfortable operating with imperfect information, making smart bets, and course-correcting quickly. You get things done while bringing partners along with you.

How You Will Make An ImpactStrategic Product Partnership

• Act as a thought partner to Product and Design leaders with deep understanding of our users and market dynamics, co-shaping roadmaps and annual plans that balance growing our core business with expanding into new opportunities
• Bring strong product intuition and user empathy to identify high-leverage initiatives, ensuring engineering resources align with both strategic priorities and delivering exceptional customer experiences
• Develop deep command of the problems parents face and translate those insights into technical and product strategies that drive meaningful impact

Engineering Leadership & Team Building

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of engineering managers and senior individual contributors, expanding the organization by ~30% in 2026 while maintaining a high bar for talent and culture
• Recruit exceptional engineering leaders and senior ICs who embody our values of ownership, excellence, and continuous learning—building the team that will take Babylist to the next level
• Create an environment where engineers are empowered to do their best work, fostering collaboration, psychological safety, and a culture of thoughtful risk-taking as we scale

Operational Excellence & Scale

• Evolve our product development processes, building on our "you build it, you run it" philosophy and Shape Up principles to create scalable, repeatable systems that enable sustained high performance as we grow from very good to great
• Establish the operational rigor, metrics, and visibility needed to support ambitious growth targets while preserving our ability to move fast and stay close to users
• Own long-term engineering capacity planning and technical roadmapping, anticipating future staffing, skillset, and architectural needs 12-18 months ahead so engineering is never the bottleneck to business success

AI & Product Innovation

• Lead the integration of AI and ML capabilities into user-facing products as a significant portion of our 2026 roadmap, ensuring these technologies deliver genuine value to parents while building the organizational expertise to leverage AI responsibly and effectively
• Champion the strategic adoption of AI-powered development tools and workflows across engineering teams, turning AI productivity gains into competitive advantages through faster iteration, higher code quality, and increased engineering leverage
• Balance the opportunity to transform how we serve families with the responsibility to implement AI thoughtfully, transparently, and in service of real user needs

Technical Vision & Architecture

• Partner with engineering leaders to shape technical architecture decisions that support both current scale and future growth across new business lines and product expansion
• Maintain deep awareness of emerging consumer product and technology trends, translating insights into strategic opportunities that keep Babylist at the forefront of innovation and strengthen our competitive position as the market leader
• Ensure our technical foundation—observability, monitoring, incident response, and infrastructure—keeps pace with our growth, so families can depend on Babylist during life's most important moments

Why You Will Love Working At BabylistOur Culture

• We work with focus and intention, then step away to recharge
• We believe in exceptional management and invest in tools and opportunities to connect with colleagues
• We build products that positively impact millions of people's lives
• AI is intentionally embedded in how we work, create, and scale—supporting innovation and impact

Growth & Development

• Competitive pay and meaningful opportunities for career advancement
• We believe technology and data can solve hard problems
• We're committed to career progression and performance-based advancement

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive salary with equity and bonus opportunities
• Company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Retirement savings plan with company matching and flexible spending accounts
• Generous paid parental leave and PTO
• Remote work stipend to set up your office
• Perks for physical, mental, and emotional health, parenting, childcare, and financial planning

About Compensation

We use a market-based approach to compensation. The starting salary range for this role is:

$296,310 to $355,572

Your starting salary will be based on your location, experience, and qualifications, with increases over time tied to performance, role growth, and internal pay equity