Director of Engineering

The Role

Planetary is looking for a Director of Engineering to lead our engineering practice across a growing portfolio of client work. You'll be the person who translates client goals into technical strategy, sets the architectural foundation for each project, and makes sure the engineers executing that work have the guidance and code review they need to deliver at a high level.

This is a senior, client-facing role with real ownership. You'll work alongside our design and strategy leads at the start of engagements, drive technical scoping and estimation, and stay hands-on through implementation. You'll also be building the engineering culture at Planetary: setting standards, mentoring the team, and helping us get better at what we do.

About Planetary

Planetary builds industrial-strength systems for brands that can't afford to fail. Our work spans consumer-facing websites, B2B web applications, and everything in between.

We're a small, senior team. Projects typically involve close collaboration between strategy, design, and engineering from day one. We move deliberately, communicate directly, and take craft seriously. We started as a remote team and have built our culture around that, with flexible hours, autonomy over your time, and a real emphasis on work/life balance.

What You'll Do

Architecture and technical strategy

• Translate client business requirements into technical recommendations, including architectural diagrams, stack decisions, and vendor evaluations
• Define and implement the core architectural patterns for new engagements to prepare for team-wide implementation
• Evaluate new tools and technologies and make recommendations that are stable, scalable, and consistent with Planetary's standards
• Estimate levels of effort for engineering work based on proposed solutions

Client and project collaboration

• Join discovery and scoping calls with clients and prospects to understand their needs and advise on technical direction
• Communicate technical decisions clearly to non-technical stakeholders
• Collaborate with project managers, designers, and strategists to ensure technical constraints and opportunities are factored into project planning early

Engineering leadership

• Review code across client projects, providing specific and actionable feedback
• Mentor engineers on the team, identifying growth areas and helping them work through implementation challenges
• Define and maintain engineering best practices, documentation standards, and quality benchmarks for the team

What You'll Bring

Required

• 10 or more years of professional engineering experience, with significant time in an agency or similarly fast-paced, multi-client environment
• Deep expertise with Vercel, Next.js, and Sanity CMS
• Experience managing and mentoring a team of five or more engineers
• A track record of architecting and shipping complex web projects from scratch
• Strong communication skills, including experience presenting to clients or stakeholders

Strong fit if you also

• Have experience with full-stack development and are comfortable working across the entire project surface when needed
• Have a sharp eye for UI detail even though design is not your primary discipline
• Are actively curious about emerging tools and willing to evaluate them rigorously before recommending them
• Have a working relationship with AI coding tools and a clear point of view on where they raise the quality bar and where they need to be kept on a short leash

Location: Must be based within the continental United States.

What Success Looks Like

In the first few months, you've gotten oriented across our active client work, established a clear point of view on what we're doing well and where there are gaps, and started building trust with the team and with clients.

Over time, success looks like clients who feel confident in our technical direction, engineers who are growing and producing higher-quality work, and a Planetary engineering practice with documented standards that don't depend on any single person to enforce them.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage for full-time employees
• 4 weeks of paid time off per year, plus holidays including 2 weeks at the end of the year
• One-time remote work stipend to set up a comfortable working environment
• Flexible hours and full remote autonomy

To Apply

Send a concise email to [email protected] . Include links to your LinkedIn, GitHub, and any portfolio or examples of past work. In your email, briefly cover your past development and management experience, a library or tool that has shaped how you think about engineering, and one project that pushed you technically.