Director of Engineering

Job description

**Who we are** Our mission at Quandri is to transform insurance into a trusted and delightful experience using AI. We are building the AI operating system for North America’s best insurance agencies and brokerages. For the first time ever, we have the technology to fundamentally change how insurance operates, and the stakes are human. Better insurance means families protected from harm, businesses able to take risks, and communities more resilient when the worst happens. For insurance practitioners, the ability to deliver this level of service finally becomes possible. **What we do**Quandri brings deeply specific, vertically-focused AI to the industry’s most critical stakeholders:insurance agencies and brokerages. Agents are the lifeblood of the industry, the place where most property and casualty insurance is sold and serviced. Yet operating an agency is harder than ever. Peak product complexity, accelerating consolidation, a deepening talent crisis, and the AI revolution are all reshaping how agencies work. Quandri sits at the cutting edge of this shift, rebuilding how agencies operate one workflow at a time. We pair a deep understanding of insurance processes, systems, and data with serious technical capability and proprietary models, so the transformation is tangible and operational rather than aspirational. We’re making insurance better for policyholders, while helping insurance brokerages deliver a better client service, grow faster, and harness AI so that they control the future of insurance distribution. **Why join us?**You'll join a fast-moving team with real ownership, direct access to leadership, and a genuine hand in shaping the company's next chapter. We are headquartered in beautiful Vancouver, BC, backed by [leading US and Canadian investors](https://www.quandri.io/newsroom/quandri-raises-12m-to-scale-ai-automation-for-insurance), and the recognition has followed: - [LinkedIn’s Top Canadian Startups](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-startups-2025-15-canadian-companies-rise-linkedin-news-zbube/) in 2024 & 2025 - [Deloitte’s Fast 50](https://www.quandri.io/newsroom/quandri-named-to-the-deloitte-technology-fast-50) - [CB Insights’ Insurtech 50](https://www.quandri.io/newsroom/quandri-named-to-cb-insights-insurtech-50) and [Fintech 100](https://www.quandri.io/newsroom/quandri-recognized-in-cb-insights-fintech-100) - [The Globe and Mail’s Top Growing Companies in Canada](https://www.quandri.io/newsroom/quandri-ranked-one-of-canadas-top-growing-companies). **About the Role:**As the engineering leader of the two teams driving our agentic workflows and natural language experience (NLX), you will be responsible for leading the engineering for some of the most critical product experiences for the company’s growth. As a key member of our engineering leadership team, you will also contribute to building and driving a high-performing engineering organization that scales as headcount grows. Your expertise will be crucial in mentoring other developers, guiding them to grow their technical skills. You will also be responsible for hiring new talent and training them to ensure they meet our high standards. We expect effective communication and ownership, ensuring clarity and comprehensiveness. The ideal candidate is adaptable, curious, and driven, with a passion for diving deep into technical problems and a desire to make a significant impact. Reporting to the VP of Engineering and working with product managers, other engineering leaders, customer success, and business stakeholders, you will drive impact through team health, operational excellence, and delivering against aligned objectives. ### In this role you will be expected to: - Build and drive day-to-day processes that lead to a highly efficient team of high performing engineers - Build and deliver incrementally with a multi-quarter roadmap that drives operational excellence, scalability and reliability. - Hire, coach, and mentor individuals, fostering a strong cross-functional organization. Your leadership will be key in developing the team's skills and capabilities. - Provide technical expertise and leadership throughout product life cycles. Influence best practices for software engineers on your team and ensure the operational excellence of high-stake services. This includes regular reviews and updates to meet evolving requirements and security standards. - Collaborate with stakeholders, including Product Managers, Data/AI engineers, Customer Success, Partnerships, other internal engineering teams, and company leaders. - Contribute to the engineering leadership of the entire organization to continually align the org with Quandri’s guiding principles. - Provide clarity in an ambiguous environment, both for your team and for your peers and leaders. ### The right person for this role will have: - Over 4 years of engineering team management experience. - More than 8 years of professional engineering experience. - At least 5 years of experience delivering mission critical software - In-depth knowledge of engineering practices and patterns for the full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, certification, and live-site operations. - Proven experience partnering with product management and internal technical teams. - Proficient in software development best practices, with a history of deploying and operating software at scale. - Experienced in designing and implementing databases, backends, and APIs, ensuring efficient data management and seamless integration of different system components. ### Who we’re looking for: - **Problem solver.** As we’re dealing with new technology, you will need to experiment, think creatively and be okay with failing in order to find the right solutions. We’re looking for someone who enjoys this process. - **High standards.** We hold high standards as an organization and expect you to push our standards even higher. While perfection can be the enemy of progress, we do expect very high quality work. - **Adaptable.** As we’re an early stage company, things are constantly changing and it is a fast paced environment. You need to be able to adapt and change with it. - **Impact.** We don’t expect you to be married to your job, but you take it seriously and want to make a big impact. We’re not interested in playing small and want someone who feels the same way. - **Curious.** Our customers are awesome and they have amazing problems for us to solve - you should be genuinely interested in our product, industry, customers and the challenges that we are solving. This is essential to be successful in any role at Quandri. - **Ownership.** You own your work and take pride in your team’s success. We never hear you say “that’s not my job.” Of course we’re here to support you every step of the way, but we want someone who continually seeks more responsibility and thrives in high accountability environments. - **You go deep.** You understand technical problems at a very deep level and aren’t satisfied with a surface level understanding. You are able to leverage this understanding in your day to day work to build better, holistic solutions. - **Intelligent.** You need to be smart and able to learn new concepts quickly. ### Our guiding principles - **Customers at the core.** We put the customer at the center of all we do. At a basic level, we believe business success comes down to deeply understanding customers' wants and needs, and tying your success to the true success of your customers. We prioritize customer needs above everything else, and know that in the long term the weighing machine will tie our success together. - **Move with urgency.** The default state of organizations is to get slower and more bureaucratic as they grow. More time is spent getting on the same page rather than actually producing work. We embed default urgency into everything we do to fight back against this. If we need to move more slowly and deliberately for an important decision or project, we will, but we will do this intentionally and not let it become our default state, as velocity is our most important advantage - Be curious. We understand the world by being curious and asking why. We aren't satisfied with surface level understanding, and seek a deeper understanding of why things are the way they are. Don't take someone's word for it or the answer "because that's how we do it." Understand why and dig deep. - **Excellence in execution.** We know that what separates good from great is a high level of execution. We commit ourselves to excellence in everything that we do, from delivering an amazing product to writing a great email. - **Act like an owner.** We're all owners of the business and act like it. We follow through on commitments, own our results and think long-term. When everyone in a company exhibits high ownership, things don’t slip through the cracks and you need less process to ensure the right thing gets done. - **Fight for simplicity.** The law of increasing functional information states that systems evolve to become more complex over time. At Quandri, we believe there is sophistication in simplicity; as such, we intentionally fight for streamlined solutions and are committed to the uncomplicated. - **AI-first.** We aim to solve problems with AI. Not all problems can be solved with AI, and we know this, but there are an increasing number of problems that can be and we prioritize AI-first thinking with our customers and in our internal operations and decision making. ### Compensation and Benefits - The range for base pay is $190k - $255k which is dependent on level of experience - Employee stock options, granted based off experience level upon hire and subject to a standard vesting schedule - Employee stock options based on experience level - Comprehensive health benefits, including $500 Lifestyle Spending Account - Four weeks of paid vacation per year - Work anywhere in the world for 60 calendar days of the year - Parental leave top-ups: 6 months for birthing parents, 8 weeks for non-birthing parents (up to $100,000 annual salary)