Director Of Software Development Jobs in Pasadena, CA

The Role

The Sr. Director of Software Development leads our engineering organization with a sharp focus on quality, platform stability, and execution discipline across a complex, mature software ecosystem. This role ensures that software delivered to franchisees and customers is reliable, predictable, and scalable, and that issues are prevented early in the development lifecycle rather than discovered late or in production.

This role pairs executive leadership with strong technical depth. The Sr. Director of Software Development will establish development standards, enforce accountability, and partner cross-functionally to streamline release processes while remaining close enough to the architecture to review complex implementations and drive root-cause problem solving.

Work Location: This position follows a hybrid work schedule. We are seeking candidates based in the Greater Los Angeles area, or within a reasonable commuting distance, who can work from our Los Angeles headquarters on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday to support collaboration and business needs. Remote work is available on the remaining weekdays.

Work Authorization: Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future employer sponsorship. At this time, we are unable to sponsor or transfer employment visas. Candidates who require visa sponsorship now or in the future will not be considered.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and enforce a strong Definition of Done (DoD) so work is complete, thoroughly tested, and production-ready before deployment.
• Drive execution discipline and accountability across Software Development for correctness, completeness, and system impact.
• Streamline release processes to improve predictability, reduce last-minute deployment risk, and eliminate post-release fixes.
• Build a culture of engineering excellence through accountability, ownership, continuous improvement, and disciplined execution.

Platform Quality & Technical Execution 

• Own overall platform stability and output quality, systematically minimizing regressions and production defects.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance, including reviewing complex architectural implementations and ensuring sound design decisions.
• Ensure developers understand, design for, and manage cross-system dependencies in a complex multi-tenant environment.
• Lead root-cause analysis (RCA) for production incidents and implement systemic safeguards to prevent recurrence.
• Develop and execute technical improvement plans that address technical debt, simplify architecture, improve maintainability, and increase long-term platform reliability.
• Own the quality of software releases by ensuring engineering practices, validation, and release readiness consistently reduce production defects and improve predictability.
• Help establish and enforce Definition of Ready (DoR) and Definition of Done (DoD) standards to improve execution quality throughout the development lifecycle.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Talent Development 

• Partner closely with Product and QA leadership to ensure requirements are build-ready upstream before development begins.
• Mentor and coach Senior Developers and Developers, fostering their technical growth while strengthening problem-solving abilities, technical expertise, and overall execution across the team. 
• Collaborate cross-functionally to align software delivery with broader business imperatives and franchisee operational needs.

The strongest candidate is part executive leader and part technical strategist: someone who has a track record of instilling discipline and reducing incidents in complex software systems, but who can still go deep into architectural and debugging discussions when needed.

• Experience: Typically 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including at least 5 years leading software development organizations with responsibility for engineering quality, delivery, and people leadership.
• Leadership Background: Proven experience leading software engineering organizations (VP, Director, or Head of Engineering level) within mid-sized, growing companies (approx. 100–1,000 employees).
• Hands-on Technical Credibility: Earlier in their career, the successful candidate was an accomplished software engineer and still possesses the technical depth to challenge architectural decisions, mentor senior engineers, and quickly understand complex production issues.
• System Experience: Significant experience working on mature, complex codebases and multi-tenant SaaS platforms.
• Quality & SDLC Track Record: Demonstrated success improving software quality, stabilizing platforms, reducing production incidents, and enforcing SDLC discipline.
• Systems Mindset: Thinks in terms of full system health rather than isolated features, with a relentless focus on preventing problems before they hit production.
• Decisive & Accountable: Comfortable setting a high bar, enforcing development standards, holding teams accountable, and making tough technical decisions.
• Cross-Functional Communicator: Strong communicator who effectively translates technical risks and system trade-offs for Product, QA, and executive leadership.
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience). An advanced degree is a plus.

The Mathnasium Mission
Teach children math so they understand it, master it, and love it.
Math can change their lives, and they can change the world.
Mathnasium makes math make sense, building children's confidence and a deep understanding and lifelong love of mathematics. With more than 1,000 locations on four continents, our franchised and company-owned learning centers provide tutoring from pre-K through high school.
The Mathnasium Method™ increases a child's math competency and improves their lives by opening the doors to higher education, greater career opportunities, and a better future. It is in that sense that we aim to change the world ... one child at a time.
Our teaching method, the Mathnasium Method™, is the life’s work of Larry Martinek, Mathnasium’s Chief Instructional Officer and a teacher and math teaching consultant in the Los Angeles area for more than 35 years. The Mathnasium Method™ uses a time-tested, customized program which stems from a unique assessment to identify what students need to improve their math skills. We offer personalized instruction, proprietary worksheets, and games to build Number Sense and provide a fun and supportive environment in which children can learn and practice math.