Senior Director, Engineering, Avalara Tax Research

What You'll Do

We’re looking for a strategic and technically strong engineering leader to drive innovation and scale for one of Avalara's flagship SaaS products—a $50M revenue-generating line with double-digit growth and a customer base in the hundreds of thousands. This is more than just a leadership role. It’s a chance to put your fingerprint on one of the top AI-enabled platforms in the industry, steering both its near-term transformation and long-term innovation strategy.

What Your Responsibilities Will Be

• Lead and inspire engineering teams through a multi-year transformation, including replatforming legacy components and building modern, scalable infrastructure.
• Drive innovation by weaving AI into the product’s core—working hand-in-hand with PMs and data scientists to deliver customer-facing, AI-powered experiences.
• Own the product’s technical roadmap, ensuring it aligns with business objectives, customer demands, and long-term scalability goals.
• Foster a culture of excellence, accountability, and forward-thinking engineering.
• Act as a strategic advisor to executive leadership on AI integration, technical investment, and product growth strategy.

What You’ll Need To Be Successful

• Proven success managing engineering organizations behind $50M+ product lines or similarly scaled SaaS platforms.
• A bachelor’s degree (or higher) in Computer Science is required.
• A solid engineering foundation—capable of understanding, building, and scaling complex systems.
• Expertise in platform modernization (replatforming, scalability, microservices, etc.) coupled with a strong understanding of AI-driven product development.
• Track record of building and mentoring high-performing teams, with a leadership style that’s both empowering and execution-focused.
• Clear, strategic communication—comfortable engaging across technical, product, and business teams.

What Makes This a Bar-Raiser Role

• AI Bar Raiser At Avalara, this role is expected to be an AI Bar Raiser — a leader who elevates both the technical capability of the organization and the practical application of AI across engineering and operational workflows.
• The expectation is to create a culture of 10x productivity through the effective use of AI tools, modern engineering technologies, automation, and an agile execution mindset where speed is table stakes.
• The leader in this role must consistently raise the bar across architecture, engineering discipline, AI adoption, operational excellence, talent density, and cross-functional execution.

How We’ll Take Care Of You

• Total Rewards In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.
• Health & Wellness Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.
• Inclusive culture and diversity Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture.

What You Need To Know About Avalara

• We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech. We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year.
• Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.
• We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear.
• We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.
• We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it.