{"id":3147960,"url":"https://alion.io/job/tekion-director-engineering","title":"Director, Engineering","company":{"id":804,"name":"Tekion","domain":"tekion.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/tekion","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":81,"open_postings":12,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.75,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":47,"computed_at":"2026-10-24T06:02:35Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Chennai, India"],"countries":["IN"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":52000,"max_usd":126000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":49},"experience_years_min":12,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Aerospike","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"ElasticSearch","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Redis","optional":false},{"name":"Scrum","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-23T07:11:02Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-23","last_verified_at":"2026-10-24T03:04:18Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"About Tekion:\nPositively disrupting an industry that has not seen any innovation in over 50 years, Tekion has challenged the paradigm with the first and fastest cloud-native automotive platform that includes the revolutionary Automotive Retail Cloud (ARC) for retailers, Automotive Enterprise Cloud (AEC) for manufacturers and other large automotive enterprises and Automotive Partner Cloud (APC) for technology and industry partners. Tekion connects the entire spectrum of the automotive retail ecosystem through one seamless platform. The transformative platform uses cutting-edge technology, big data, machine learning, and AI to seamlessly bring together OEMs, retailers/dealers and consumers. With its highly configurable integration and greater customer engagement capabilities, Tekion is enabling the best automotive retail experiences ever. Tekion employs close to 3,000 people across North America, Asia and Europe.\nRole Overview\nWe are seeking an Engineering Director to lead the Chennai engineering organization for 2 scrum teams, shared platform resources (Architect, ML Engineer, SDET), and a team of ~20 engineers across backend, frontend, AI, and QA disciplines. You will own delivery accountability, team health, technical quality, and the cross-team coordination that keeps two scrum teams moving in the same direction. You will be the primary technical counterpart to the US-based Product leadership, the direct interface to platform teams, and the person who sets the engineering culture for the entire team.\nKey Responsibilities\nLead the full Chennai engineering organization (~20 engineers): two Scrum teams, two Engineering Managers, Staff/Senior engineers, Applied ML, and Staff SDET.\nOwn delivery accountability: sprint cadence, cross-team dependency management, risk tracking, and executive reporting on engineering progress.\nSet and enforce technical standards: hexagonal architecture discipline, AI-native integration patterns, code quality gates, and observability standards across both teams.\nAct as the primary technical counterpart to US-based Product leadership - translate business requirements into engineering execution plans, surface trade-offs early, and maintain shared understanding of what is being built and why.\nOwn the cross-team coordination interface to platform teams (Agentic Engine, Core Platform, ARC backend, Design) - ensuring product dependencies are tracked, escalated, and resolved on schedule.\nHire, develop, and retain top engineering talent: own the full hiring pipeline, define career ladders, conduct performance reviews, and make compensation decisions.\nDrive the technical roadmap for Phase 2 in partnership with the ML Architect, Applied Scientist, and Product leadership - shaping the next wave of AI capabilities.\nMaintain technical depth: actively participate in architecture reviews, challenge design decisions, and unblock engineers on complex distributed systems and AI integration challenges.\nBuild and sustain a high-trust, high-accountability engineering culture where engineers feel ownership, psychological safety, and pride in their craft.\nSkills & Qualifications\n12+ years of software engineering experience with 5+ years of engineering leadership - managing managers and leading teams of 15+ engineers.\nDeep technical background in Java backend systems, distributed microservices, and event-driven architecture - able to engage credibly in architecture reviews and design decisions.\nProven track record building and operating SaaS platforms on AWS with multi-database stacks (MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Elasticsearch, Redis/Aerospike).\nDemonstrated experience with hexagonal architecture at scale - enforcing domain isolation as teams and services grow.\nStrong cross-functional leadership: experience working closely with Product Management, Design, and executive stakeholders across geographies (US-India distributed teams).\nTrack record of recruiting and developing senior engineering talent - building teams from the ground up in competitive markets.\nExperience delivering in fast-paced, high-ambiguity environments with evolving platform dependencies and shifting priorities.\nGood to Have\nExperience leading engineering teams building AI-native products (LLM integration, agentic systems, scoring pipelines, MCP tool design).\nBackground in martech, customer data platforms, or dealer/automotive technology.\nPrior experience managing both backend and frontend engineering disciplines within the same org.\nExposure Temporal for durable workflow orchestration at the team level.\nPerks & Benefits\nCompetitive compensation and generous stock options.\nMedical insurance coverage.\nWork with some of the brightest minds from Silicon Valley's most dominant and successful companies.\nCurrent Tekion Employees: Please apply via the Internal Job Board in Ashby\nNote: Tekion recently transitioned to a new recruiting tool and we appreciate your patience and feedback as we adjust to our new system!\nTekion is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, victim of violence or having a family member who is a victim of violence, the intersectionality of two or more protected categories, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.\nFor more information on our privacy practices, please refer to our Applicant Privacy Notice here.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5598,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":12,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Health insurance","Insurance coverage","Stock options"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Automotive Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-23T11:03:59Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":63,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.632,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":47,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-24T06:02:35Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/tekion-director-engineering","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/tekion-director-engineering.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-24T06:57:10Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":10259,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-25T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":804},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=804"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ftekion-director-engineering"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ftekion-director-engineering"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ftekion-director-engineering"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/tekion-director-engineering\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ftekion-director-engineering"}]}