Director, Product Engineering

About CBRE Data & Technology

CBRE is the world's largest commercial real estate services and investment firm. Our Data & Technology organization sits at the intersection of real estate expertise and digital innovation, building the platforms, data products, and AI capabilities that give CBRE and its clients a decisive competitive edge. We are transforming how CBRE operates by embedding engineering leadership directly into the business-accelerating delivery, raising architectural standards, and turning product vision into measurable client and revenue impact.

Role Summary

• This role provides accountable engineering leadership for a portfolio of high-impact, client-facing data products. It sits at the intersection of management and craft: you will lead and grow a team of engineers while remaining a credible, hands-on technical voice in every room that matters.

• You will own outcomes end-to-end-from architectural decisions and engineering quality to roadmap delivery and stakeholder confidence. You thrive in complexity, resolve ambiguity with clarity, and hold the line on engineering standards even when speed is the demand.

• This is not a role for someone who manages from a distance; it requires equal parts leadership and execution.

What You'll Do

• Engineering Leadership & Team Management

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of forward-deployed and product engineers, setting clear expectations and raising the collective technical bar.

• Own team delivery: plan sprints, manage capacity, remove blockers, and hold the team accountable to commitments without micromanaging execution.

• Make and defend architectural decisions-balancing technical quality, speed of delivery, and long-term platform scalability.

• Establish engineering standards, code review practices, and quality gates that apply consistently across all products in scope.

• Recruit, onboard, and develop engineering talent; build a team culture grounded in ownership, transparency, and continuous improvement.

Product Engineering & Delivery

• Drive delivery of complex, multi-workstream data product programs from design through production-maintaining focus on client impact and business value.

• Partner daily with product managers and business stakeholders to translate requirements into technical solutions and realistic delivery plans.

• Serve as the senior engineering voice in product planning and roadmap discussions, providing technical precision and honest assessments of scope and risk.

• Operate effectively in ambiguity-making high-quality decisions with incomplete information and adjusting course rapidly when context changes.

• Remain hands-on where it matters: contributing to architecture, reviewing critical code, debugging hard problems, and leading by example on engineering craft.

Stakeholder Engagement & Alignment

• Build trusted relationships with product, business, and technology stakeholders across multiple lines of business.

• Translate complex technical constraints into plain business language; translate ambiguous business intent into precise engineering specifications.

• Accelerate cross-functional decision-making by surfacing trade-offs clearly and resolving technical blockers before they become delivery risks.

• Lead compelling product reviews and demos that build stakeholder confidence, secure investment alignment, and communicate progress honestly.

Architecture, Data & Platform Ownership

• Set and enforce architectural direction across the product portfolio-ensuring consistency, reuse, and long-term maintainability.

• Drive sound data modelling, ontology design, and data governance practices that produce trustworthy, scalable data products.

• Oversee integration of AI and ML capabilities-including LLM integrations, agentic workflows, and predictive analytics-into live production environments.

• Partner with platform and infrastructure teams to ensure products are built on solid, secure, cloud-native foundations.

Enablement & Engineering Culture

• Establish reusable patterns, shared components, and documentation that accelerate delivery across current and future product investments.

• Elevate the technical baseline of the broader organization by coaching engineers, facilitating learning, and sharing best practices across teams.

• Contribute to the evolution of CBRE's product engineering operating model-feeding back lessons that improve how engineering is embedded into the business.

What You'll Need

• 10+ years in software engineering, data engineering, or a related technical discipline.

• 3+ years in an engineering management or technical lead role with direct people management responsibility.

• Demonstrable track record of delivering complex data or software products in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.

• Prior experience working directly with business and product stakeholders-not only engineering peers-to define and deliver outcomes.

• Experience with forward-deployed, embedded, or customer-facing engineering models is a strong plus.

Technical Skills

• Full-stack proficiency: modern front-end frameworks (React, TypeScript), back-end services (Python, Node.js, or similar), and cloud-native architectures (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

• Strong data engineering fundamentals: data modelling, pipeline development, SQL, and hands-on experience with modern data platforms (Snowflake, Databricks, or similar).

• API design and integration: RESTful and GraphQL APIs, enterprise system connectivity, and secure data exchange patterns.

• Strong command of software quality practices: testing, CI/CD, observability, and security fundamentals.

AI & Emerging Technology

• Hands-on experience integrating large language models (LLMs) into production products-including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and evaluation frameworks.

• Practical knowledge of agentic AI architectures: designing and deploying multi-step, tool-using workflows that automate complex business processes.

• Experience applying generative AI and natural language interfaces to accelerate product value and improve user experience.

• Familiarity with traditional ML model deployment in production: feature engineering, model serving, monitoring, and drift detection.

• Ability to assess emerging AI capabilities with technical rigor and translate them into near-term business outcomes-not just prototypes.

Leadership & Communication Skills

• Proven ability to lead and develop high-performing engineering teams in a matrixed, fast-paced environment.

• Ability to think like a product manager: user-centric, outcome-oriented, and comfortable prioritizing under constraints.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication-capable of leading stakeholder workshops and presenting to senior business leadership with confidence.

• Natural tendency to simplify rather than over-engineer; the judgment to know when pragmatism serves better than perfection.

• Strong demo and storytelling instincts: builds compelling, polished demonstrations that generate momentum with non-technical audiences.

Skills Snapshot

• Engineering LeadershipAI / LLM IntegrationData Platform Architecture

• Product ManagementCloud-Native EngineeringAgentic Workflows

• Stakeholder EngagementData Modelling & GovernanceAPI Design & Integration

• Team DevelopmentCI/CD & DevOpsSQL & Advanced Analytics

Why CBRE?

At CBRE, we believe the future of commercial real estate will be built on data and technology. As a Director of Product Engineering, you will be at the center of that transformation-leading teams that ship software reaching real clients, driving measurable revenue, and redefining how a global business operates.

• Named a Fortune Most Admired Real Estate Company for 14 consecutive years.

• Named a World's Most Ethical Company by Ethisphere for 11 consecutive years.

• Ranked #3 on Barron's Most Sustainable Company list.

• Access to a global network of technology, data, and real estate expertise, with investment in AI and digital transformation at the highest levels of leadership.

Equal Employment Opportunity: CBRE is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity. We have a long-standing commitment to providing equal employment opportunity to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, veteran status, political belief, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

Candidate Accommodations: CBRE values the differences of all current and prospective employees and recognizes how every employee contributes to our company's success. CBRE provides reasonable accommodations in job application procedures for individuals with disabilities. If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request via email at [email protected] or via telephone at +1 866 225 3099 (U.S.) and +1 866 388 4346 (Canada).

CBRE, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer (Women/Minorities/Persons with Disabilities/US Veterans)