Programming Director Jobs in Minnesota (NOW HIRING)

Ovative Group is an independent, full‑funnel media, measurement, and creative firm that helps brands such as Best Buy, Domino’s, American Eagle, The Home Depot, Post, Disney, Tumi, MichaelKors, Boost Mobile, and UnitedHealth Group transform their media and measurement programs. Our proprietary MarTech platform, EMRge, measures businesses holistically and drives sustainable growth.

Director of Engineering – responsible for leading the Data Products and BI & Reporting teams and for owning engineering systems, standards, and processes that enable high‑quality software delivery. Works closely with Product, Data Science, and other stakeholders to advance the EMRge platform.

• Define, implement, and continuously improve development standards, coding guidelines, and engineering governance controls across all product teams.
• Own the quality framework for engineering: code review standards, testing strategy, release gates, and technical debt management.
• Champion security, compliance, and data governance best practices, including SOC2 alignment.
• Drive architectural consistency and scalability across the EMRge platform and its services.
• Evaluate and introduce new tools, technologies, and practices that advance engineering maturity.
• Own and partner across the full SDLC, ensuring predictable, repeatable delivery processes.
• Build and maintain the DevOps infrastructure and toolchain that enables developer productivity and deployment confidence.
• Partner with Engineering Managers to deliver sprint planning, capacity management, and delivery forecasting.
• Track and deliver engineering health metrics such as cycle time, deployment frequency, change failure rate, and mean time to recovery.
• Identify and systematically resolve developer experience friction across environments, tooling, and workflows.
• Directly manage and develop a team of Engineering Managers and Lead Engineers, providing coaching, expectation‑setting, and career development support.
• Foster a culture of accountability, psychological safety, continuous learning, and high standards.
• Partner with recruiting to attract and retain outstanding engineering talent; participate actively in hiring processes and candidate assessment.
• Drive team health through regular engagement, meaningful 1:1s, and proactive resolution of morale or performance issues.
• Elevate Ovative’s engineering brand through internal development programs, external community engagement, and content creation.
• Serve as the senior engineering accountability layer for on‑time, high‑quality delivery of product features and platform capabilities.
• Partner with Product leadership to align roadmap priorities with engineering capacity and technical constraints.
• Remove cross‑functional blockers that impede delivery and resolve dependency and coordination issues across teams.
• Provide transparent, accurate delivery forecasting and status communication to engineering and product leadership.
• Balance velocity and sustainability—ensuring teams can maintain delivery pace without compromising quality or team health.

• 10+ years of engineering leadership experience, including direct management of Engineering Managers or senior technical leads.
• Demonstrated ability to build and run engineering operating systems: SDLC ownership, DevOps maturity, quality governance, and delivery metrics.
• Track record of developing high‑performing, engaged engineering teams through coaching, accountability, and culture building.
• Strong cross‑functional collaboration skills with the ability to lead discussions with technical and non‑technical stakeholders, including senior product and business leaders.
• Experience driving engineering standards and governance in a complex, multi‑team product environment.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts, trade‑offs, and delivery risk clearly to executive audiences.
• Previous hands‑on software development experience (front‑end, back‑end, or data engineering).
• Preferred: Experience in a data‑intensive SaaS or analytics product environment.
• Familiarity with SOC2 compliance requirements and implementation in an engineering context.
• Experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure) and modern data infrastructure.
• Background in marketing technology, measurement, or analytics platforms.

Salary range for this position: $170,000–$228,000, inclusive of a 30% annual bonus.

• Access to all office spaces in MSP, NYC, and CHI.
• Frequent, paid travel to Minneapolis headquarters for company events and in‑person collaboration.
• Generous paid vacation policy.
• 401(k) match program.
• Top‑notch health insurance options, inclusive of same‑sex partners.
• Family formation benefits including reimbursement options for fertility, pregnancy, and parenting needs.
• Monthly stipend for mobile phone and data plan.
• Sabbatical program.
• Charitable giving via time and financial match program.
• Shenanigan’s Day (team‑building day).

Ovative is committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone can participate and thrive. We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind, including on the basis of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. Our policies reflect this commitment, including benefits for same‑sex partners.