At Compass, our mission is to help everyone find their place in the world. Founded in 2012, we’re revolutionizing the real estate industry with our end-to-end platform that empowers residential real estate agents to deliver exceptional service to seller and buyer clients.
Compass International Holdings (CIH) envisions a world where buying or selling a home is simple and pleasant for everyone. CIH is home to some of the most recognized names in real estate around the world: @properties, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21, Christie's International Real Estate, Coldwell Banker, Compass, Corcoran, ERA Real Estate and Sotheby's International Realty. Together, our approximately 340,000 real estate professionals serve millions of home buyers and sellers across 120 countries and territories, all in service of our mission to help everyone find their place in the world.
For many of those buyers and sellers, the journey begins on one of our consumer websites or apps: searching for a home, exploring a neighborhood, or finding the right agent. Our ambition is to make those experiences the best in real estate: simple, seamless, and designed so every buyer and seller is guided by a trusted real estate professional and supported by the best tools and technology. This role leads the engineering behind that ambition.
We are looking for an experienced Director of Engineering with deep expertise in consumer-facing web and mobile experiences to lead engineering for our brands' consumer websites and apps. Each of our brands has its own identity, audience, and offering, from global luxury to everyday homeownership, and consumers should feel that difference in every experience we build. Reporting to the VP of Software Engineering, you will be a leader of leaders, accountable for a multi-team organization across the U.S. and internationally that delivers those distinct brand experiences on shared platforms. Your scope spans home search and the consumer experience across compass.com, our brand web and mobile platforms, and our international sites, along with the growth levers (SEO, conversion, and lead capture) that connect consumers with our agents.
You'll build and grow managers who run great teams on their own, and you'll shape the organization itself: how teams are formed, where to invest, and who's ready to step up next. You will partner directly with executive leadership across Product, Design, and our brands to set strategy, and you will shape how the organization is structured to deliver it.
You'll take on problems that don't come with a playbook: nine distinct brands, millions of consumers, and a chance to redefine how people find a home online. You'll set the direction, bring executives and teams along with you, and see it through. If you want to set the standard for consumer experience in real estate, this is the role.
What you will do:
- Own the consumer experience technical strategy: Set the multi-year engineering vision for our brands' websites and apps with Product, Design, and brand leaders, and own the investment case with executive leadership.
- Win the first click: Make our brands the first place buyers and sellers go when their home search begins, design every page around what they came to do, and turn every visit into a direct connection with one of our agents. Let data and experimentation show what works.
- Scale across brands and borders: Shape a platform strategy that lets nine distinct brands express their own identity and serve consumers in 120 countries and territories, without rebuilding the basics for each one.
- Set the bar for excellence: Set org-wide standards for quality, reliability, and performance, hold your managers accountable to them, and own how the org responds when things break.
- Invest wisely: Own the org's spend across cloud, vendors, contractors, tech debt, and KTLO, make clear calls about what not to do, and hold delivery partners to the same standards as our own teams.
- Bet on what's next: Define how the org evaluates emerging technology and sponsor the bets worth making, including AI, both in the experiences we build for consumers and in how our engineers work. AI is already part of how CIH works, from AI Assistant in our Home Platform to the consumer experiences we're building. You'll accelerate how AI shapes the consumer journey, helping buyers and sellers understand homes faster and decide with confidence.
- Build the organization: Hire and develop strong managers and senior engineers, shape how teams are structured, and plan succession so the org thrives without you, while building a culture of ownership, trust, and continuous improvement.
- Lead through influence: Align leaders across Product, Design, Marketing, brands, and peer engineering teams, especially where priorities compete.
What we look for:
- Leader of leaders: 10+ years of engineering leadership, including 6+ years leading managers, and a track record of building distributed organizations that deliver without you in the room.
- Deep consumer engineering roots: 12+ years in software engineering, with deep expertise in modern web and mobile architecture for consumer products used by millions.
- Our technology landscape: TypeScript and React on the front end, Node.js, Java, Go, and Python services, headless content management, and cloud-native, containerized infrastructure on AWS. You'll also guide the move of our brand websites onto shared, modern foundations.
- Growth at scale: A proven record of moving consumer growth metrics, such as organic traffic, conversion, and engagement, through technical SEO at scale (programmatic pages, sub-second page performance, and Core Web Vitals), visibility in AI-powered search, and high-velocity experimentation.
- Multi-brand, multi-market platforms: Experience building shared platforms and design systems that power multiple brands or markets, including international launches.
- Excellence you can measure: High standards for reliability, web performance, and accessibility, and the operational rigor to hold an org to them.
- AI fluency: You've shipped AI-powered consumer experiences, such as personalization, generative content, or computer vision, and used AI to make engineering teams faster.
- Business and executive acumen: You translate technical strategy into business outcomes for executives, and you manage budgets, vendors, and delivery partners with discipline.
- People-first leadership: You hire and grow great leaders, make the hard calls on talent with fairness and emotional intelligence, and genuinely love developing people.
- Nice to have: Experience in real estate, marketplaces, or multi-brand consumer businesses.
Compensation: The base pay range for this position is $275,310-$305,900; however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Bonuses and restricted stock units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to a full range of benefits. Base pay is based on market location. Minimum wage for the position will always be met.
Perks that You Need to Know About:
Participation in our incentive programs (which may include eligible cash, equity, or commissions). Plus paid vacation, holidays, sick time, parental leave, and recharge leave; medical, tele-health, dental and vision benefits; 401(k) plan; flexible spending accounts (FSAs); commuter program; life and disability insurance; Maven (a support system for new parents); Carrot (fertility benefits); UrbanSitter (caregiver referral network); Employee Assistance Program; and pet insurance.
Do your best work, be your authentic self.
At Compass, we believe that everyone deserves to find their place in the world — a place where they feel like they belong, where they can be their authentic selves, where they can thrive. Our collaborative, energetic culture is grounded in our Compass Entrepreneurship Principles and our commitment to
diversity, equity, inclusion, growth and mobility. As an equal opportunity employer, we offer competitive compensation packages, robust benefits and professional growth opportunities aimed at helping to improve our employees' lives and careers.
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