Director of Software Engineering
Clark Construction · Irvine · $190,000–$220,000 (stated in the posting)
About Altura
Altura, LLC is a technology-driven engineering services firm focused on improving energy, environmental, and financial performance across our clients’ organizations. Altura is not your typical software company. We are an innovative consulting subsidiary of one of the country’s most respected construction companies with deep expertise in deriving value from building analytics software. Our solutions scale from highly complex individual buildings to national real estate portfolios, leveraging core skills in software engineering, building systems and controls engineering, IT/OT, project implementation, data analytics, and financial analysis to provide major impact for our clients.
About the Role
As the Director of Software Engineering at Altura, you will be operating with close connections to our customers and users; you will be a strategist and a doer; you will make tangible impacts on how buildings are built and operated across the country. If you are seeking stability over startup chaos and love owning the entire development stack, this is your place.
The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise with dedicated people management skills to drive software engineering excellence. Working in close collaboration with product, cybersecurity and business leadership, you will translate strategic roadmaps into scalable technical solutions, relying on internal domain experts and trusted clients to define software needs. Crucially, this leader serves as a mentor and player-coach, actively managing our software team to maximize their potential, performance, and outcomes while directly contributing to the product. We are seeking an innovative leader who is fully adapted to AI-driven development and is ready to transform how technology shapes building performance.
Key Responsibilities
- Team Leadership & Execution: Act as a dedicated people manager and player-coach, fostering a high-retention culture of collaborative problem-solving and technical excellence. Lead by example by actively contributing to development work while maximizing individual potential and driving high-quality team outcomes.
- Product Engineering Mindset & Innovation: Champion the adoption of a Product Engineering mindset, mentoring developers to think holistically about the end-user experience and broader product strategy. Lead the integration of modern AI development tools to boost team velocity, automate routine coding tasks, and enhance overall engineering quality.
- Strategic Technical Leadership & Product Alignment: Partner closely with Product leadership to translate product vision, strategy and market needs into a multi-year technical architecture roadmap. Ensure the platform's scalability, reliability, and maintainability directly support the company's strategic goals.
- Software Platform & Integration Management: Oversee the development of Altura's software platform, and suite of Altura Analytics applications and development environments. Partner with Information Technology & Cybersecurity leadership to ensure secure infrastructure, optimal deployment strategies, and robust maintenance of the platform and data analytics environments.
- Data Architecture & Innovation: Direct the architectural evolution of Altura's core data layer. Drive software architecture and tooling to integrate emerging technologies (AI/ML, IoT, advanced analytics) that transform how building performance consulting is delivered.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Analytics Solutions/Delivery and other Altura Service Directors, relying on their domain expertise to define technical requirements and harvest project-level innovations into organization-wide capabilities.
- System Interoperability: Ensure seamless technical integration between custom Altura applications and key third-party systems and data models (e.g., SkySpark, Procore REST APIs, Primavera P6, Autodesk Construction Cloud/Revit, FacilityGrid).
- Executive Communication: Serve as a high-level technical consultant during select pre-sales and client engagements, demonstrating Altura's competitive technology advantage. Collaborate with the Director of Marketing to translate technical capabilities into compelling market positioning.
Required Qualifications
- Proven Engineering Leadership: 5+ years of experience directly managing software teams, with a demonstrated track record of building high-retention, collaborative cultures
- Technical Ecosystem Mastery: 15+ years of experience in full stack software engineering with demonstrable expertise in modern development, languages, infrastructure/DevOps and quality (e.g. TypeScript/Javascript, ReactJS, Python, RESTful APIs, GraphQL, Playwright, etc.).
- Internal Partnership: Proven ability to build deep trust with internal stakeholders, relying on domain experts to define product strategy and successfully translating their vision into engineering execution.
- Advanced Data Architectures: Strong competency in designing and scaling diverse data architectures for highly technical software (e.g., relational, time-series, NoSQL, graph-based), to model complex system relationships and engineering processes.
- AI-Driven Development: Fully adapted to modern AI-driven development methods, utilizing cutting-edge AI tools to accelerate engineering velocity and elevate code quality. Experience leading teams through this transformation to maximize impact
- Platform Integrations: Proven ability to architect cohesive workflows by integrating diverse software systems, utilizing RESTful APIs.
Desired Qualifications
- Product Launch & Scaling: Proven track record of leading the technical strategy to bring a major new software product to market, successfully navigating the zero-to-one lifecycle, and architecting the platform to support rapid commercial scaling and long-term growth.
- Domain Adaptability & Experience: Working knowledge of SkySpark or other commercial building analytics tools and data science techniques. Familiarity with related controls, commissioning, building construction and smart building technology domains. Note: If you do not have direct past experience with SkySpark or related tools, a proven track record of quickly adapting to new, complex technical domains is required.
- Industry Workflows: Experience with construction management (Procore), scheduling (Primavera P6), BIM (Revit), and commissioning tools.
- Vendor Management: Experience managing relationships with key software technology vendors and evaluating new development tools or platforms.
Application Instructions
To apply, please submit your resume and a personalized cover letter. To ensure you've read through the details of this role, please include within your cover letter the favorite part of a recent book or movie you've enjoyed.
Additionally, we ask that you provide a link to a specific artifact relevant to your engineering background (e.g., a relevant code repository, an architecture diagram you designed, or a project portfolio).
A Note on AI: We are actively seeking leaders who utilize AI-driven development tools in their daily work; we also value our team members preserving their authentic voice in their professional communications. Heavily auto-generated cover letters will be deprioritized.
Next Steps: Please note that a brief follow-up questionnaire will be sent to all responders to help ensure mutual fit before we advance anyone to an interview for this critical leadership role.
Location: Irvine, CA (preferred) or Oakland, CA
About Altura: Altura is proud to offer a generous total compensation package that includes base salary, incentive compensation plan, and a comprehensive benefit package that includes health benefits (medical and dental plans), paid time off (vacation, sick and holiday), financial benefits (retirement plan with both match and annual company contribution, life insurance, short- and long-term disability, and commuter benefits). Additional benefits for regular full-time employees include fitness reimbursement, healthcare and dependent care pre-tax spending plans, tuition reimbursement, back-up daycare and family support benefits, EAP, work life assistance and a holiday contribution program. The base salary range for this position is $190,000-$220,000 annually. Placement within the range is determined by business factors including specialized skills, years of relevant experience, and specific technical evaluations. #LI-Hybrid