Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering

About Cumulus

Cumulus is a Quality Management System (QMS) that ensures critical construction and maintenance activities are done right the first time, every time. By integrating AI-powered workflows and connected IoT devices, the Cumulus QMS improves the productivity and quality of critical work, such as bolt tightening, welding, and pressure testing.

To date, Cumulus has been used to manage over 15,000,000 work completions across industries such as energy, construction, manufacturing, semiconductors, data centers, transportation, chemicals, renewables, and more. In addition to improving safety and sustainability, our technology also has been proven to reduce costs for quality control and data review by over 60%.

Cumulus’s transformative technology has been widely recognized in the industry, including the following awards and honors:

• 2023 BuiltWorlds Americas Summit Demo Day Winner for Cumulus AI
• 2022 BuiltWorlds Maverick Awards winner for Cumulus CEO Matthew Kleiman
• 2021 BuiltWorlds Smart Jobsites 50 Leader List
• 2020 IoT Breakthrough “IoT Startup of the Year” award
• 2019 CNBC Upstart 100 list

Role Overview

The Head of Engineering reports directly to the CTO and operates alongside peer leaders, including the Architect and the Head of Platform, each of whom also reports to the CTO. Each peer role carries a clearly defined scope and sphere of authority. This structure is designed to give the CTO leverage across the organization by ensuring that technical strategy, engineering execution, and platform reliability are each owned by a dedicated leader with full accountability in their domain.

The Head of Engineering owns execution. Where the Architect defines what Cumulus is building toward technically, and the Head of Platform owns how it is delivered and operated, the Head of Engineering owns how the teams build: the people, the process, and the pace. You are responsible for growing and running high-performing engineering squads that ship the product roadmap predictably, sustainably, and with craft.

This is a builder's role. You will grow the team, set the operating rhythm, and make sure great work ships without burning people out. You will work closely with Scrum Masters to eliminate execution blockers, partner with Product to translate the roadmap into deliverable sprint work, and build the leadership bench that allows the engineering organization to scale. You do not own architecture decisions, but you bring technical judgment to execution decisions and hold the team to high engineering standards.

Responsibilities

Team Building and People Leadership

·      Run full hiring, onboarding, mentoring, and performance cycles across the engineering organization.

·      Build a leadership bench of squad leads and senior engineers who can run their own teams.

·      Create and protect a culture that ships great work without burning out: psychological safety, clear expectations, sustainable pace, and room to grow.

·      Set high standards for delivery and professional growth, and hold the team to them with fairness and consistency.

·      Own career development conversations and performance management for all direct reports.

Delivery Execution and Operating Rhythm

·      Own the delivery cadence across squads: sprint planning, demand-versus-capacity planning, predictable execution, and transparent status to the CTO and leadership.

·      Work with Scrum Masters to identify and eliminate execution blockers: process, dependencies, resourcing, and coordination friction that slow the team down.

·      Balance roadmap commitments against reactive work (customer tickets, live incidents, technical debt) so planned initiatives are not repeatedly crowded out.

·      Run an agile environment with tight feedback loops, iterative delivery, and continuous improvement.

·      Own delivery metrics: completion rate, throughput, carry-over rate, and the sprint health signals that indicate systemic risk.

Hands-on Engineering Judgment

·      Stay close to the work: participate in code reviews, help unblock hard problems, and bring practical technical judgment to delivery decisions.

·      Bring depth in mobile and web delivery (React Native and React) and the judgment to know when to dive in versus delegate.

·      You do not own architecture decisions, but you engage meaningfully in design reviews and ensure your teams do the same.

Partnership with Product

·      Work closely with Product Owners and the Product function to align on scope, sequencing, and trade-offs so the team delivers the highest-value work first.

·      Translate the product roadmap into executable sprint plans, making capacity and sequencing trade-offs visible and explicit.

·      Communicate proactively when delivery risk surfaces, and come to those conversations with options, not just problems.

Partnership with Platform and Architect

·      Partner as a co-equal peer with the Head of Platform: engage squads early in architecture design reviews, honor Definition-of-Done gates for observability and test automation, and guarantee squad capacity for platform work.

·      Partner with the Architect to ensure teams understand and apply technical standards; escalate systemic standards gaps rather than patching them sprint by sprint.

·      Keep Software Quality Engineers embedded and effective in the squads day-to-day.

Scaling the Organization

·      Grow the engineering organization to meet the company's scaling needs, phasing hires thoughtfully as the business evolves and new delivery demands emerge.

·      Spin a contractor surge team up and down with demand, keeping commitments flexible and cost-aware.

·      Work with the Architect and Head of Platform to ensure new teams are onboarded into a coherent technical and operational context.

About You

You are an experienced engineering leader who has spent years building software and leading the teams that ship it. You lead from the front: you have run full hiring, mentoring, and performance cycles, you still care about the craft, and you build teams that do great work without burning out.

Professional Qualifications

The successful candidate will have:

• Bachelor's degree in accounting. CPA or CPA-eligible (preferred)
• 4+ years of overall accounting or finance experience, with at least 2 years at a SaaS company, with a solid understanding of recurring revenue and subscription metrics.
• Experience working with external accountants through a financial statement audit.
• Experience leading a monthly close and preparing accurate financial statements with support from a bookkeeper.
• Strong Excel skills.
• Sound judgment, attention to detail, and the ability to manage several priorities and build/improve finance processes in a growing company.
• Experience using QuickBooks Online and subscription billing systems (preferred).
• Experience with revenue recognition under ASC 606 (preferred).

Benefits

• Salary ranges from $115,000 to $130,000 per year.
• Participation in our equity incentive plan.
• Unlimited paid time off.
• Commuter benefits for public transportation.
• Health and dental insurance.
• Flexible Spending Account.
• Retirement benefits account with employer match.