[Hiring] Director of Support Engineering @Ashby

Role Description

Support Engineering investigates the issues that require deeper technical understanding than frontline Support can provide. The team uses customer context, application behavior, logs, databases, integrations, APIs, and code-level context to determine whether an issue can be resolved through configuration, data correction, documentation, enablement, or an in-app change—or whether it is a product defect that Engineering needs to fix. Your role is to make that path clear and scalable:

• Establish shared expectations across teams.
• Ensure escalations are well validated and actionable.
• Help the organization learn from recurring patterns rather than treating each issue as an isolated event.

You’ll lead the strategic evolution of the function through strong partnership with Support Engineering managers, frontline Support, Product, and Engineering:

• Shape routing, triage, escalation, and feedback mechanisms.
• Build reporting that makes technical friction visible.
• Guide investments in diagnostics, tooling, documentation, and enablement.
• Help leaders make better tradeoffs between immediate customer resolution and durable product or process improvements.

As Director, you’ll directly manage the Support Engineering Manager and hold them accountable for:

• Team performance.
• Technical quality.
• People development.
• Progress against the function’s priorities.

You’ll set the vision for how Support Engineering grows with Ashby’s product surface area and customer complexity, while building the leadership structure, career paths, and operating model needed to scale over time.

Qualifications

• You have led a Support Engineering, Technical Support, Developer Support, Production Support, or similarly technical function in a B2B SaaS or complex software environment.
• You have led through managers or built a leadership layer, and know how to create clarity, accountability, and growth without becoming a bottleneck for decisions.
• You have enough technical depth to reason about APIs, integrations, logs, databases, application behavior, architecture, and debugging approaches—and to earn the trust of experienced engineers.
• You have shaped the boundary between frontline Support, Support Engineering, Product, and Engineering, including escalation criteria, triage practices, ownership, and feedback loops.
• You have used data and recurring patterns to drive improvements in supportability, product quality, tooling, process, or Engineering prioritization.
• You are energized by systems-level problems and can turn operational friction into a focused strategy, a useful first version, and measurable improvement.
• You communicate clearly with technical and non-technical audiences, especially when explaining tradeoffs, uncertainty, customer impact, and recommended action to senior stakeholders.
• You are a hands-on, customer-centric leader who can move between strategy, organizational design, technical details, and the day-to-day realities of supporting customers.
• You think about scalable support systems through automation, self-serve, and AI-enhanced tooling applied with good judgment.

Requirements

• You should not apply if you’re looking primarily for a people-management or queue-oversight role and do not want to shape technical workflows, escalation quality, or cross-functional operating models.
• Most of your experience is in internal IT, infrastructure, cloud operations, or systems administration without substantial experience with customer-impacting SaaS applications, technical support, or product supportability.
• You prefer to operate within established systems rather than design new structures as a function and product organization grows.
• You see Support Engineering primarily as a pass-through queue to Engineering rather than an investigation, enablement, and leverage layer that should help resolve more issues independently.
• You’re uncomfortable influencing Engineering or Product priorities, challenging assumptions respectfully, or navigating tradeoffs between a quick resolution and a more scalable solution.
• You prefer prolonged analysis or perfect certainty over making a well-reasoned decision, learning quickly, and improving the system in motion.

Benefits

• Benefits vary by country and are shared in more detail during the process. International employees receive statutory benefits and, where available, employer-paid supplemental health coverage.
• 10-year exercise window for stock options.
• Unlimited PTO with four weeks recommended per year.
• Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US.
• A $1,200 annual learning and professional-development budget.
• A one-time $2,000 home-office setup budget for furniture, monitors, peripherals, and ergonomic equipment, plus a company-provided laptop.
• Extended health benefits for you and your dependents (subject to availability with our Employer of Record).
• Opportunities to spend time with teammates through an annual company offsite, team offsites, local meetups, and virtual events.