Software Engineering Leadership Advisor, DX

About DX

DX is one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the country, helping engineering leaders build high-performing, productive teams. Our platform delivers actionable insights into developer experience and productivity - empowering companies like Netflix, Uber, Dell, Pfizer, and Vanguard to operate at their best.

DX has grown from a bootstrapped startup into a category-defining company with a customer base that spans some of the most sophisticated engineering organizations in the world. We recently closed on our acquisition by Atlassian, which means more resources behind our mission, faster product innovation, and an even bigger impact for the teams who rely on us.

How we work at DX:

Companies have all kinds of culture slides. At DX, we want to be very clear about what we care about and how we judge performance. For us, it all boils down to individual mastery, becoming the best at your craft. Those who exhibit this quality will thrive here and be unduly rewarded. We can't control outcomes due to competitors, the economy, decision-makers, etc., but what we can control is doing our jobs at the highest level possible.

About the role

We're looking for a Software Engineering Leadership Advisor (remote US) to help senior engineering leaders make better decisions about developer productivity, developer experience, and the impact of AI on their organizations. This role is part of the DX Research Team, whose mission is to advance how the world understands and improves developer productivity. This team turns data, research, and real-world stories into actionable insights that help engineering leaders make better decisions and in doing so, reinforces DX as the trusted source of truth in developer productivity.

In this role, you will:

• Spend time talking with customers and prospects understanding their org structures, processes, metrics, and constraints and advising CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and platform leaders on how to design and run effective developer productivity and DevEx programs.
• Turn what you're seeing and hearing across customers into high-signal written content: frameworks, playbooks, and narratives that other leaders can learn from.
• Partner closely with DX's research, product, marketing, and sales teams to ensure what we publish reflects both customer reality and DX's point of view.

• A pattern you're seeing across several customers (e.g., "how top-performing teams are actually using AI in code review").
• A short, practical brief synthesizing learnings from a set of leadership conversations on a topic (e.g., "how VPs of Eng are reshaping their metrics stack in 2025").
• A concise framework or decision guide (e.g., "when to centralize vs. decentralize platform engineering").

• A DX Leadership Playbook for running a DevEx program.
• A state-of-the-practice report on how engineering orgs are using AI.
• A deep-dive framework that becomes the default way leaders talk about a complex topic (e.g., "the maturity model for developer productivity programs").
• A cohesive guide that pulls together several "small ships" into a single, end-to-end resource.

• Leading 1:1 and small-group conversations with CTOs, VPs of Engineering, Heads of Platform/DevEx, and Staff+ ICs.
• Asking sharp questions, quickly understanding an organization's context, and diagnosing where productivity and DevEx issues actually sit (process, platform, culture, org design, etc.).
• Providing pragmatic, opinionated advice on how to make progress without overstepping into generic management consulting or vague recommendations.
• Facilitating workshops, executive briefings, or working sessions to help customers design or refine their DevEx and productivity programs.

• Spotting patterns across conversations and separating anecdotes from real signals.
• Working with DX's data, research team, and product telemetry where needed to cross-check and strengthen your conclusions.
• Turning messy, qualitative input into clear narratives, frameworks, and recommendations that are both credible and immediately useful.

• Writing clear, concise, and compelling reports, briefs, and essays that senior engineering leaders will actually read.
• Collaborating with editors, designers, and marketers to turn insights into polished, high-impact artifacts.
• Representing DX's perspective in talks, panels, podcasts, and webinars as needed, often using your advisory work as source material.

• Partnering closely with sales, customer success, and product to:
• Identify the right leaders to talk to.
• Feed insights back into DX's roadmap and messaging.
• Ensure the right people see and use the content you create.
• Working with DX Research to align advisory narratives with our broader research themes and findings.

• Significant experience (often 710+ years) in one or more of: Engineering leadership (e.g., Director / VP of Eng, Head of Platform/DevEx); Technical consulting or advisory work with software organizations; Developer productivity, developer experience, or related socio-technical/system design roles.

• Comfortable operating at the executive level. You can earn the trust of CTOs and VPs of Engineering, ask hard questions, and withstand scrutiny.

• Proven ability to turn conversations and field experience into artifacts whether that's internal playbooks, strategy memos, industry reports, or widely read essays.

• Strong at structuring complex problems and explaining them in a way that is clear and grounded, and actionable.

• Low ego, high ownership. You care more about the quality and impact of the work than about credit. You're comfortable doing both the visible and invisible parts of this job.
• Opinionated but open-minded. You're willing to take a stand, but you update your views when the evidence changes.

• Experience inside large engineering organizations or platform teams, particularly where you've worked on developer productivity, DevEx, or engineering effectiveness.
• Prior roles as a Field CTO, Deputy CTO, Principal Engineer, or similar where you regularly met with customers or internal stakeholders in an advisory capacity.
• Experience working alongside product, marketing, and sales to turn insights into narratives, go-to-market programs, or feature direction.
• A network of senior engineering leaders and practitioners you can tap for feedback and collaboration.

• Spend meaningful time with senior engineering leaders, helping them think more clearly about developer productivity, DevEx, and AI.
• Turn those conversations into deep, rigorous work that is actually read and used by other leaders.
• Operate with a high degree of autonomy, while partnering closely with research, product, marketing, and sales.
• See your frameworks, playbooks, and narratives show up in how Atlassian, DX, and our customers run their engineering organizations.