Head of engineering vs director of engineering: what real listings say

Head of engineering vs director of engineering: which one leads more people, and which one still writes code? There is no standard answer. Company by company, the titles mean different things. To see what the titles mean in practice, we pulled the lines on reporting, team and hands-on work from real listings on 3 November 2026. We found 22 listings with these titles on Himalayas and Remotive. Some are the same role posted for several countries.

We show five below in detail, from the listings’ own words. The pay figures are as shown by Himalayas, not stated by us.

Five listings side by side

Title and company	Reports to	Who they lead	How hands-on	Pay shown
Head of Engineering, Lemon.io	Not stated. Works side by side with the founder	A growing team of engineers	“Not a management-layer role”. Hands-on	Not stated
Lead Engineer / Head of Engineering, Navable	Works directly with the founder and CEO	Starts with external engineering resources, then hires and leads an in-house team	“Deeply hands-on” near term: writes production code	$180,000 to $230,000 a year (USD)
Head of Engineering (Technology), Aktivate	The CEO	A team of software and data engineers, QA analysts and delivery managers. The listing calls the role a solo leader of technology	Asks for hands-on use of modern technologies	$160,000 to $180,000 a year (USD)
Head of Engineering, Rewards, Moniepoint	Not stated in the lines we read	A team of nine engineers, including an engineering manager, to build out	Asks for at least 5 years managing managers	Not shown
Director of Engineering, Product, Turnkey	The CTO and co-founder	The product engineering organisation. Hires and develops engineering managers and senior engineers	Owns technical direction and people leadership	$250,000 to $290,000 a year (USD)

Five more “Director” listings, in short

• Redcare Pharmacy, Director Engineering, Retail Media & Marketplace. Reports to an executive director or VP of engineering, and leads through two engineering managers.
• College Board, Engineering Director. Asks for experience managing teams of four to eight direct reports, and accountability for the team’s technical output.
• College Board, Senior Engineering Director. Works at the platform level across several teams, and asks for 10 or more years of experience, including significant experience leading leaders.
• Akamai, Director Engineering. Describes leading a team of managers and engineers.
• LegitScript, Director of Engineering. Asks for 10 or more years in software engineering, including four or more leading engineers. It says you would own reliability, monitoring and incident response for your teams’ services.

What we notice

In these ten listings, the Director roles mostly lead through other managers, and report to a CTO, VP or executive director. The Head of Engineering roles at smaller companies (Lemon.io, Navable, Aktivate) sit close to a founder or CEO, and are hands-on or lead the whole technology function.

But the pattern is not clean. Moniepoint’s Head of Engineering listing asks for at least five years managing managers, which sounds like a director role. Another Moniepoint Head listing in our set asks for five or more years of hands-on production coding as a practising engineer. The same title can be a senior technical founder’s right hand or a leader of leaders.

What the head of engineering responsibilities usually include

From the listings we read, the head of engineering responsibilities named most often are:

• Owning the technical roadmap and architecture.
• Building, hiring and leading the engineering team.
• Working with a founder, CEO or CTO and the product team.
• Setting engineering standards and culture.
• At smaller companies, writing production code.

This list comes from the four Head listings in the table, not from a standard definition.

What to ask before you apply

1. Who do I report to?
2. How many people will I lead, and are they managers or engineers?
3. Will I write code, and how much?
4. Who hires and fires on the team?
5. What budget and decisions are mine?
6. Where can I work from? Navable’s listing says the role is remote but candidates must be based in the US. Check the location lines before anything else. See what remote jobs worldwide really means.