Engineering Director

Engineering Director

College Board – Technology

Location: This is a remote role. Candidates who live near CB offices have the option of being fully remote or hybrid (Tuesday and Wednesday in office). All CB employees are required to occasionally travel to meet in person for business purposes.

Type: This is a full-time position

About Technology at College Board

We are a mission-driven engineering team building and evolving the technology that powers and protects the future of learning. Our systems support highly trusted education programs used by millions of students each year, operating at significant scale and public responsibility. Today, we are focused on designing and delivering a critical new initiative that extends our platform in meaningful ways: blending foundational system work with thoughtful experimentation as we adapt to emerging technologies and new learner needs. We combine modern, cloud-native engineering practices with years of platform modernization, security hardening, and large-scale digital delivery, operating as an experiment factory that tests assumptions and iterates based on evidence rather than tradition. What makes this team distinct is the rare combination of meaningful public impact, platform-scale technical challenges, and the freedom to shape how mission-critical systems are built and evolved.

About the Team

Create is a group of cross-functional teams responsible for building and evolving how educators author tasks and assessments. Create Core is the platform team within Create that builds the shared foundations the authoring applications are made from: a rich text editing library, canonical item and task data models, a centralized metadata service, and APIs/interfaces for interacting with assessment data.

Core's users are other engineering teams as it builds and maintains foundational libraries and services for our applications. Its repositories run as an internal open-source project that engineers can propose changes to. The team does critical work that the rest of the ecosystem depends on, so quality, developer experience, and accessibility are fundamental aspects of the role.

 About the Opportunity  

As Engineering Director, Create Core, you will lead the platform team at the center of College Board's authoring ecosystem. This is direct team leadership: you will manage a small group of experienced engineers, work closely with Product to define the roadmap, and be accountable for team health, delivery, and the long-term coherence of the platform.

The role asks you to treat the platform as a product. Your users are the engineers on Create's application teams, and success looks like those teams shipping faster because Core's foundations are solid, well-documented, and easy to adopt. You will prioritize Core's investments against real application needs and steward the contribution model that lets consuming teams help build what they use.

Leaders in this space are expected to operate at or near a senior engineer level in system design and code quality, with the ability to review code, assess technical tradeoffs, and guide teams toward sound implementation decisions. You will partner closely with the domain's Principal Engineer on technical strategy, with application engineering directors on adoption and boundaries, and with product and design leaders on where the platform goes next. Success in this role is measured by the health and effectiveness of the Core team, the trust application teams place in the platform, the degree to which shared foundations reduce duplicated work, and the environment you create for engineers to learn, experiment, and do their best work.

 In this role, you will:

Provide Platform Leadership & Delivery (40%)

• Lead the Create Core team directly, setting clear goals and expectations while enabling engineers to own execution.

• Work in close partnership with Product and the application teams to prioritize the Core roadmap, balancing new capabilities against the stability and support obligations.

• Run the platform as a product: gather needs from consuming teams, make deliberate build/decline decisions, and communicate direction so application teams can plan against it.

• Act as the point of decision for platform scope, adoption sequencing, and cross-team trade-offs involving Core.

• Develop deep understanding of the business needs your team serves to provide leadership and consistent messaging around the work of the team.

Technical Leadership & Quality (30%)

• Guide the architecture of shared libraries and services.

• Hold a high bar for developer experience: documentation, paved paths, reference implementations, and local-first tooling that make Core easy to adopt

• Ensure accessibility is built into the foundations, meeting WCAG 2.1 AA across Core components with assistive-technology testing in the definition of done

• Partner with the Principal Engineer and architects to evolve data models, editor architecture, and platform boundaries as the ecosystem grows

Build a highly engaged, and high-performing team (30%)

• Cultivate norms that support strong communication, a positive working culture, and an engaged team.

• Define ceremonies that support your high-performing Agile team, while maximizing productive work time.

• Actively cultivate the superpowers of team members and leverage these to develop products.

• Support diversity and inclusion from the perspectives of demographics, skills, and experience.

• Manage work culture to ensure the mission and operating principles of College Board are consistently recognized and utilized to promote a productive and fair work environment.

• Support and invest in the growth of your team members.

About you, you have:

• 7 years’ experience in Agile software application development, applying knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to a broad range of life-cycle activities to meet the requirements for highly secure, data-heavy applications.

• Proven expertise delivering web-based products or platform-level features in cloud-first environment using modern development tools.

• Written and reviewed production code using preferred technologies: TypeScript/JavaScript, Node.js, React.

• Ability to design and evaluate AWS-based architectures with best practices.

• Experience managing teams of 4 to 8 direct reports, including both junior-level and higher-level individual contributors.

• Accountability for the technical output of the team, either through personal experience or strong communication with engineers.

• Experience overseeing product or platform features, infrastructure, and vendor management, ensuring compliance with internal policies.

• Comprehensive experience in all aspects of people management, including hiring, engaging, and developing team members, with a proven track record of successful leadership.

• Experience leading engineering and architecture discussions, bringing stakeholders to agreement.

• Exceptional planning, prioritization, and execution skills, delivering results on time and on budget in fast-paced environments.

• Experience establishing new teams and laying foundation for new products, ideally within a large organization.

• Outstanding communication and leadership abilities, building trust quickly across teams and levels, and effectively coaching team members with timely, balanced feedback.

• Able to travel 3-5 times a year to our NYC or Reston, VA office  

• Authorization to work in the United States for any employer

All roles at College Board require:

• A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work

• Authorization to work in the United States for any employer

• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and a comfort learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively. 

• Clear and concise communication skills, written and verbal

• A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input.

• A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking.

• A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success.

About Our Process 

• Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.

• While the hiring process may vary, it generally includes: resume and application submission, recruiter phone/video screen, hiring manager interview, performance exercise, a panel interview, a conversation with leadership and reference checks.

What We Offer

At College Board, we offer more than just a paycheck, we provide a meaningful career, a supportive team, and a comprehensive package designed to help you thrive. We’re a self-sustaining nonprofit that believes in fair and competitive compensation, grounded in your qualifications, experience, impact, and the market.

A Thoughtful Approach to Compensation

• The hiring range for this role is $140,000 - $175,000

• Your exact salary will depend on your location, experience, and how your background compares to others in similar roles at the College Board.

• We aim to make our best offer upfront—rooted in fairness, transparency, and market data.

• We adjust salaries by location to ensure fairness, no matter where you live.

You’ll have open, transparent conversations about compensation, benefits, and what it’s like to work at College Board throughout your hiring process. Check out our careers page for more.