VP of Engineering

Built on over four decades of pioneering research at Princeton University, our platform represents the leading edge of innovation in freight and transportation planning. We help customers unlock double-digit revenue gains and drive smarter, data-driven operations at scale.
Today, Optimal Dynamics is a Series C company of ~70 employees, backed by top-tier investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, The Westly Group, Activate Capital, and Koch. We're on a mission to redefine the way logistics decisions are made—and we’re just getting started.

We are a team of bright, kind, and solution-oriented people focused on creating value for our customers. We can solve problems individually, but understand that the best solutions are found when the team brainstorms ideas together. We are excited about balancing the need to deploy new solutions quickly and designing solutions that are secured, reliable, maintainable, and scalable for the long run.

Optimal Dynamics is searching for a VP of Engineering who is a builder at their core. As our senior engineering leader, the VP of Engineering reports directly to our COO, leads our engineering organization, oversees engineering team managers, and serves as Engineering’s voice to executive leadership. 

You’ll set technical direction, turn business priorities into executable plans, and build strong, connected teams, all while staying hands-on in architecture and code. You’ll work closely and cross-functionally with Product, Design, AI, and Analytics leadership. 

If you see yourself as both an architect and a connector who has successfully directed fast-moving, scaling technical teams, this could be the role for you.

• Oversee and enable Engineering Managers, understand their priorities, and build a cohesive, connected engineering organization
• Recruit, develop, and retain great engineers, building a team that can scale
• Strengthen a low-ego, high-ownership engineering culture that delivers rapid and exceptional product

• Own engineering vision, architecture, and technology strategy with a focus on reliability, security, and scalability 
• Implement best CI/CD and QA practices–setting and defining policy on how we build, test, and deploy to production
• Identify blockers and execute plans that create efficiency and excellence with a willingness to not only delegate, but step in on critical needs 
• Make pragmatic decisions that fit our stage, and know when to move fast and when to invest for the long term

• Partner with AI and Analytics leadership so our AI and optimization work turns into reliable, production-grade software
• Foster agreement and collaboration - clear ownership where your teams’ work overlaps and intermingles 
• Work with Product leadership on vision, roadmap, prioritization, and tradeoffs
• Represent engineering to the C-Suite: advocate for the team, provide progress reports, flag risks early, and set realistic timelines
• Join and contribute to key customer, partner, and investor conversations, providing technical credibility 

• Implement lightweight processes, metrics, and operating rhythms that improve how fast and how predictably we deliver
• Own engineering career pathing, headcount, vendors, and cloud spend
• Ensure security, data privacy, and compliance standards meet enterprise customer expectations. 

• Experienced: Our ideal candidate has 10+ years of engineering experience and 3+ years of managing managers. Your work history showcases significant time designing and building production systems.
• Leader: You’ve led a dynamic engineering organization in a scaling technical or startup environment. Ambiguity energizes you. (Bonus points if you’ve grown a technical organization in a research-born company). 
• Technical: 
• You’re a problem-solver and architect; you stay current with emerging tools and your experience showcases a history of technical decisions that have guided engineering organizations into the future.
• You see what’s coming on the horizon and are the SME on all technical decisions, building a stack and platform that stays ahead of the technical curve. 
• You've built and scaled B2B SaaS, ideally with enterprise customers.
• Security Focused: You treat security as a business-level priority: continually hardening infrastructure, data, and access against external attacks and insider threats as we scale. You’ve directed ongoing SOC 2 compliance standards. 
• Collaborator and Connector: You excel in communicating and advocating as the go-between for engineering, product, AI/analytics, and leadership; it's part of the job that fuels you, not a chore. You connect engineers, executives, and customers alike. You can both push back with conviction and admit when you’re wrong.
• Trust Builder: You’ve stepped into teams with existing managers and history before, and you know how to earn trust and build consensus. You care about the real-world impact of technical products and see the value in the optimization our product brings to the logistics and transportation landscape. 

• You’re well-versed and up to date on our tech stack (see below)
• Experience with logistics, transportation systems, or similar complex operational domains

At Optimal Dynamics, our entire infrastructure runs on AWS, leveraging a wide range of services including DynamoDB, Aurora, SSM, and SQS to power our intelligent logistics platform.

Our tech stack includes:

• Backend & AI: Python 3 and Java
• Frontend: JavaScript/TypeScript for our web-based SPA
• Data Stack: Trino, Dagster, dbt, DuckDB, and Preset
• IaC: Terraform and Spacelift
• Cloud: AWS (ECS/RDS/S3/etc)
• CI/CD: Bazel, Github, AWS CodePipeline/CodeBuild
• GenAI: Anthropic Claude, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot

We follow modern development best practices with all code stored on GitHub. Every pull request undergoes thorough code reviews, is fully unit tested, and deployed through our CI/CD pipeline for continuous quality assurance.