DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING

REMOTE / FULL-TIME

About Chowly

Chowly is an all-in-one digital restaurant ordering platform that specializes in bringing enterprise-grade software to independent operators and emerging brands. Our mission is to simplify restaurant technology.

Chowly has quickly amassed over 17,000 restaurants on its platform, all with deeply integrated software embedded in the restaurants' technology stacks. These include some of the fastest-growing brands in the country, like Mod Pizza and many others. Chowly’s best-in-class partnership ecosystem (including DoorDash, Toast, Uber Eats, Square, and others) has created an exciting opportunity to accelerate our growth further.

We seek a Director of Engineering to provide senior technical leadership across our R&D organization. This person will report directly to the CTO and serve as the key driver of our engineering culture, talent development, and technical strategy. This is primarily a leadership role, and you will spend the majority of your time developing our people, building on and improving processes, and shaping our engineering organization, while maintaining sufficient technical fluency to guide architectural decisions and meaningful code reviews.

YOU ARE

• A people-first leader who thrives on developing engineering talent and building high-performing teams
• An experienced manager with a track record of leading and scaling teams in a fast-paced environment
• Organized and process-driven, able to bring structure and clarity to complex technical organizations
• A collaborative partner who works effectively across Product, Customer Success, and other functions
• Technically grounded enough to review code and guide architecture, with enthusiasm for AI-powered tooling and its adoption across teams.

YOU WILL

ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP

• Own the engineering org’s health, participating in hiring, performance, retention, and career development
• Build and maintain a high-trust, high-accountability engineering culture grounded in results
• Lead, coach, and mentor engineering managers and individual contributors across the R&D team
• Set the standard for engineering excellence and partner with the CTO to define organizational structure as Chowly scales
• Drive process improvements across engineering through planning, retros, incident response, and cross-team coordination

TECHNICAL OVERSIGHT

• Participate meaningfully in architecture and design discussions, providing guidance on technical direction
• Conduct and facilitate code reviews, not as a primary contributor, but as a quality bar and teaching tool
• Partner with Engineering Managers and senior engineers to identify and resolve technical debt, bottlenecks, and quality gaps
• Stay current with Chowly’s stack and evaluate emerging technologies, including AI development tools, to improve team productivity
• Champion the adoption of AI-assisted development practices across the engineering team

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL PARTNERSHIP

• Collaborate with Product leadership on roadmap prioritization, capacity planning, and delivery timelines
• Provide regular, transparent communication to the CTO and executive team on engineering progress, risks, and opportunities

REQUIREMENTS

• 5+ years of engineering management experience, including leading teams of 8+ engineers
• Demonstrated success in building, scaling, and retaining high-performing engineering teams
• Experience establishing and improving engineering processes: sprint planning, incident management, etc.
• Solid foundation in full-stack development sufficient for code review and architectural guidance

EVEN BETTER IF YOU

• Have previously built or scaled an engineering organization in a B2B SaaS or restaurant tech environment

TECH STACK

• Claude Code
• Backend: Ruby/Rails, PHP (Laravel), Sidekiq
• Frontend: React JS, Redux, NextJS, HTML5/CSS, JavaScript
• Databases: MSSQL, PGSQL, MySQL
• RESTful API Integrations, design, and troubleshooting
• CICD: GIT, GitHub Actions
• Cloud: Azure, AWS

PERKS & BENEFITS

We offer a competitive salary as well as:

• Remote first team (Chicago office space is available, but the team is entirely remote.)
• Unlimited Paid Time Off
• Parental & Holiday Leave
• 401(k) Plan
• Health & Wellness Stipend
• Robust Medical, Dental, & Vision Insurance (100% employer-paid employee medical insurance & 50% employer-paid dependents)
• Employer-Sponsored Basic Life, Short-Term, & Long-Term Disability Insurance

We’re an equal opportunity employer and comply with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. We strictly prohibit and do not tolerate discrimination against employees, applicants, or any other covered persons because of race, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, sex, gender (including gender nonconformity and status as a transgender individual), sexual orientation, marital status, age, physical or mental disability, citizenship, past, current or prospective service in the uniformed services, predisposing genetic characteristic, domestic violence victim status, arrest records, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state or local law.