Director Engineering

About the role Chime is looking for a Director of Engineering to lead our AI & App Experience (AAX) organization — the team building the next generation of the Chime member experience. AAX owns Jade, Chime’s AI-powered financial assistant, our AI platform infrastructure as well as the core app experiences and shared design system.  In this role, you’ll own the multi-quarter strategy for AAX engineering, translating company priorities into scalable plans across these teams. You’ll build and lead a bench of TLM (tech leader managers) and senior technical staff, set the technical bar for how Chime builds AI-native, member-facing products, and partner with Product, Design, Data Science, and our Risk team to shape where AAX invests next.  This is a role for a leader who is equally comfortable setting long-range technical vision and staying close enough to the details to guide hard architectural calls — someone who has helped build or scale AI/LLM-powered consumer products and knows how to grow the engineering leaders around them. The base salary offered for this role and level of experience will begin at $269,000.00 and up to $373,000.00 . Full-time employees are also eligible for a bonus, competitive equity package, and benefits. The actual base salary offered may be higher, depending on your location, skills, qualifications, and experience.  In this role, you can expect to In partnership with our product team you will own the multi-quarter strategy for AAX engineering, translating company and product priorities into our roadmap plans across consumer facing AI experiences, AI Platform, App Journey, and Design Systems. Build, lead, and hire a high-caliber leadership bench of highly technical leaders/IC’s as well as building a team culture that exemplifies a builder mindset. Partners with your team to set technical direction for the org, driving architectural alignment across our consumer facing AI experiences, AI Platform, App Journey, and Design System.   You will continue to drive our AI-native engineering culture: setting the bar for how LLM-powered features get shipped safely at scale. Own engineering’s strategic role in product direction, partnering with Product, Design, Data Science, and Risk leadership to shape roadmaps, challenge assumptions, and integrate platform and member value into long-range plans Represent AAX and engineering more broadly in cross-functional and executive forums, connecting the org’s work to company-wide strategy and outcomes Cultivate a  high-performing culture across the org, modeling Chime’s values and ensuring strong talent, performance, and career development practices on every team Ensure the org maintains strong operational practices — on-call, monitoring, and incident response — for every service/experience the team owns Contribute to overall engineering initiatives as a member of Chime’s engineering leadership team To thrive in this role, you have 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years managing managers or leading multi-team engineering organizations A track record of building and scaling AI/LLM-powered consumer products, with the technical depth to guide future investments and technical direction. Experience hiring, developing, and retaining engineering leaders (TLM’s and Staff+ ICs), and building leadership pipelines and succession plans Strong technical fundamentals across relevant parts of the stack (e.g., React Native, Python or Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, distributed systems) and the judgment to know where to go deep Demonstrated ability to translate company and product strategy into multi-quarter engineering plans, and to adapt org design as priorities and scale evolve Excellent executive communication skills — you can craft a compelling narrative that connects org strategy to business outcomes for senior leaders and cross-functional partners Experience partnering closely with Product, Design, Data Science, and Risk/Compliance functions in a regulated or high-trust environment (fintech experience a strong plus) AI-native fluency and a genuine interest in AI-native ways of working, with a track record of fostering that practice across teams rather than treating it as someone else’s job The desire to make a huge difference at a growing company, and the ability to motivate teams through delivery on aggressive schedules and goals #LI-JC1 #LI-Onsite A little about us At Chime, we believe that everyone can achieve financial progress. We created Chime—a financial technology company, not a bank*—on the premise that core banking services should be helpful, easy, and free. Through our user-friendly tools and intuitive platforms, we empower our members to take control of their finances and work towards their goals. Whether it's starting a savings account, purchasing a first car or home, launching a business, or pursuing higher education, we're proud to have helped millions un