Director, Engineering Operations & Strategy

About the company

The real world is the next frontier, and at Metropolis, we are creating the artificial intelligence to make it responsive. We are pioneering the Recognition Economy — a future where mundane repetition disappears and being known unlocks access, comfort, and belonging everywhere you go. From transforming parking into a seamless drive-in, drive-out experience for millions of Members to expanding our intelligence layer across retail and hospitality, we are building a world that feels instinctive and magical. The future isn’t coming; it’s here, and we need builders, innovators, and problem solvers to help us create it.

About the role

Metropolis is seeking a Director, Engineering Operations & Strategy to own technology strategy, operational leadership, and strategic problem-solving across our engineering organization. In this role, you will lead with high autonomy, managing a multi-million dollar engineering budget, cutting through deeply complex problems, exhibiting exceptional leadership without authority, and defining simple, scalable solutions to challenging problems at a hyper growth company. You will partner directly with senior leadership to execute M&A due diligence, streamline shared technical processes, and navigate high-stakes operational challenges. The ideal candidate thrives in uncertainty, takes full ownership of outcomes, and brings a unique blend of hands-on technical grounding and high-intensity strategic experience.

Responsibilities

• Own shared processes across the engineering department, including hiring workflows, onboarding, and training, to keep practices consistent as the org scales.
• Cut through deeply complex, multifaceted operational challenges to deliver simple, actionable solutions without waiting for top-down instruction.
• Direct and manage a $50M–$100M+ P&L budget, coordinating resources to align with high-level corporate objectives.
• Own hardware and service forecasting for critical vendors (AWS, Twilio, and similar), maintaining ongoing visibility into spend trends and flagging risks or opportunities before they become urgent.
• Own emerging strategic decisions for the engineering organization — M&A due diligence, major vendor migrations, and similar high-stakes calls — in close partnership with senior executives.
• Build alignment at the highest levels of leadership, navigating the nuances of multi-stakeholder decisions on multifaceted or high-risk initiatives.
• Keep teams unblocked and moving forward rapidly, demonstrating comfort acting with incomplete information as long as directionally correct.
• Leverage curiosity and formal methodologies to break down cross-functional silos, challenge status-quo assumptions, and drive cross-team alignment.
• Forecast operational trends and deliver strategic recommendations that favor proactive disruption over routine maintenance.
• Own all vendor management across the engineering organization, from contract negotiation and renewals to performance accountability and day-to-day vendor relationships.

Requirements

• 6+ years in high-intensity, rigorous environments.
• 2+ years of hands-on working engineering experience in software or similar engineering roles.
• A demonstrated history of working relentlessly to get hard things done: someone who runs through walls rather than around them. This intensity often comes from backgrounds like top-tier management consulting, investment banking, or strategic finance, but we care about the trait itself, not the pedigree: what matters is a track record of outworking a problem because you genuinely care about the outcome.
• Proven experience leading a strategic function with significant autonomy, managing resources, and taking full ownership of organizational outcomes.
• Exceptional ability to build trust with technical teams and influence without authority.
• Experience owning meaningful budget or resource decisions within a high-growth or complex organization, with a bias toward action over waiting for perfect information.
• Track record of operating effectively in fast-moving, high-ambiguity environments, making sound decisions without complete data.
• Exceptional ability to synthesize complex operational or technical concepts into clear rationale for senior and C-level stakeholders.
• Skilled at translating high-level business goals into concrete plans of execution that account for broad organizational impact.
• Proven excellence at leveraging AI tools and frameworks to optimize technology operations, technical evaluations, and cross-functional workflows.

Qualifications

• MBA from a top-tier business program.
• Engineering degree.
• Experience in high-growth technology scale-ups or pre-IPO environments.
• Direct involvement in M&A tech due diligence, corporate restructuring, or integration strategy.
• Experience with modern engineering workflows, cloud platforms (AWS), or AI tooling.

Schedule

Metropolis values in-person collaboration to drive innovation, strengthen culture, and enhance the Member experience. Our corporate team members hold to our office-first model, which requires employees to be on-site at least four days a week, fostering organic interactions that spark creativity and connection.

Pay

The anticipated base salary for this position is $220,000 USD to $260,000 USD annually. The actual base pay offered is determined by a number of variables, including, as appropriate, the applicant's qualifications for the position,