Director of Engineering, Compass
$275.3-305.9k
Real estate technology platform
Be an early applicant
Real estate technology platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$275.3-305.9k
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help everyone find their place in the world.
Role
Who you are
- 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
What the job involves
- 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
- 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
Our take
Compass uses an AI-driven platform to smooth out and speed up the process of buying, selling, or renting property. It functions much like a traditional broker, but employs tech to reduce the time, uncertainty, cost and friction of transactions for buyers, sellers and agents.
It's disrupting a sector so far largely averse to tech innovation, allowing users to close deals in less time than the industry average of 30-45 days. Compass is now the largest independent real estate brokerage in the USA, with over 29,000 agents nationwide.
In 2025, Compass acquired Anywhere Real Estate in a major leap that cements its place among the biggest players in US property. By uniting leading brokerage brands and expanding its agent network on a massive scale, Compass strengthens both its reach and its tech-driven platform. This adds new revenue opportunities, positioning the company to help shape the future of real estate.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
15% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
Jul 2019
$370m
SERIES G
Sep 2018
$400m
SERIES F
Total funding: $1.5bn
Company HQ
Midtown Manhattan, New York, NY
Leadership
Robert Reffkin
(Founder & CEO)After 2 years at McKinsey, Robert worked as a Lazard Associate and White House Fellow. They joined Goldman Sachs in 2006, where they worked as VP of Principal Investment before leaving in 2012 to found Compass. Alongside this, Robert ran 50 marathons in 50 states to raise $1 million dollars for for youth education and enrichment programs.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 92 more jobs at Compass