VP, Engineering

CLEAR - Corporate • New York, NY

7d • $325,000 - $365,000 • Onsite

About The Position

CLEAR is building THE secure identity company of the future. Our mission is to make experiences safer and easier—physically and digitally. With more than 38 million Members and a growing network of partners across the world, CLEAR's secure identity platform is transforming the way people live, work, and travel. Whether it’s at the airport, stadium, or throughout your everyday life, CLEAR unlocks the magic of frictionless experiences.
As VP of Engineering, you will lead CLEAR’s travel-focused engineering organization. Your mission: design, build, and scale the platforms and experiences that drive adoption, customer delight, and retention across all travel touchpoints. You’ll own the engineering strategy and execution across mobile, web, CLEAR+, hardware (eGates and EnVe), payments and subscriptions, concierge, and partner-facing tools.

Requirements

• An experienced engineering leader. 15+ years of software engineering experience with deep exposure to large-scale, consumer-facing platforms, and 7+ years managing people managers and leading multi-team organizations.
• Consumer and platform mindset. Proven success building and scaling consumer-facing products and underlying platforms, ideally with strong business outcomes (revenue, retention, P&L impact).
• Strong architectural and technical depth. Expertise in modern cloud-native architectures, distributed systems, and reliability practices, with practical experience in mobile and web technologies. Comfortable diving deep into system design, data flows, and tradeoffs.
• Cross-functional leader and collaborator. Demonstrated ability to partner effectively with Product, Design, Marketing, Operations, and Partnerships. You drive alignment across senior executives, business owners, and technical teams.
• Clarity in complexity. Able to create clarity and focus in complex, dynamic contexts. You can zoom into the details when needed, then zoom back out to set direction and priorities.
• Exceptional communicator. Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical topics to non-technical audiences and represent engineering in executive and external forums.
• Customer-obsessed, growth-minded. Passion for learning new things, driving innovation, and obsessing over the customer experience. You bring a growth mindset, are self‑aware about your strengths and areas to develop, and model continuous improvement for your teams.

Nice To Haves

• Partner Focused. Experience working with complex partner ecosystems (e.g., airlines, airports, government agencies, large enterprises) is a plus.
• Omnichannel / physical–digital experience. Background in physical–digital product ecosystems (hardware + software, field operations, partner environments) is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own the Travel engineering portfolio end-to-end. Lead the engineering teams responsible for CLEAR Plus, e‑gates, EnVe, payments and subscriptions, concierge, and related partner and internal tools. Ensure these systems are reliable, secure, performant, and continually improving.
• Set the technical strategy. Drive the engineering strategy and architecture for aviation products across physical and digital channels, in close partnership with Product. Establish a cohesive technical vision that enables premium, frictionless experiences across mobile, web, airport touchpoints, and ambassador tools.
• Build, and lead a high-performing engineering organization. Hire, develop, and manage Directors, Engineering Managers, and Engineers. Foster a culture of collaboration, ownership, measurement, and continuous improvement. Create clear career paths and succession plans across.
• Drive engineering and operational excellence. Establish and enforce high standards for code quality, testing, deployment, reliability, incident management, and on‑call practices. Use metrics and SLOs to continuously improve availability, latency, security, and cost.
• Partner deeply with Product and cross-functional leaders. Collaborate with Product, Design, Operations, Marketing, Airport Partnerships, Legal, Security, and Member Care to deliver cohesive experiences. Translate business and customer requirements into clear engineering roadmaps and execution plans.
• Own critical partner relationships. Work closely with key partners across government and industry to drive innovation at scale across CLEAR products.

Benefits

• At CLEAR, we help YOU move forward - because when you’re at your best, we’re at our best. You’ll work with talented team members motivated by our mission of making experiences safer and easier. Our offices are bright and energetic with an open concept and plenty of conference rooms and casual co-working spaces. We also offer catered lunches every day and have fully stocked kitchens. Outside of the office, we invest in your well-being and learning & development with stipends and reimbursement programs.
• We offer holistic total rewards, including comprehensive healthcare plans, family-building benefits (fertility and adoption/surrogacy support), flexible time off, annual wellness stipend, free OneMedical memberships for you and your dependents, a CLEAR Plus membership, and a 401(k) retirement plan with employer match. The base salary range for this role is $325,000-$365,000, depending on levels of skills and experience.
• The base salary range represents the low and high end of CLEAR’s salary range for this position. Salaries will vary depending on various factors which include, but are not limited to location, education, skills, experience and performance. The range listed is just one component of CLEAR’s total compensation package for employees and other rewards may include annual bonuses, commission, Restricted Stock Units.
• CLEAR provides reasonable accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities or protected needs. Please let us know if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job or perform your job. Examples of reasonable accommodation include, but are not limited to, time off, extra breaks, making a change to the application process or work procedures, policy exceptions, providing documents in an alternative format, live captioning or using a sign language interpreter, or using specialized equipment.
• We are committed to a transparent and secure hiring process. All communications related to this role will come directly from a CLEAR employee through valid CLEAR channels (e.g., a valid @clearme.com email address or verified CLEAR LinkedIn profile). We encourage candidates to remain alert to job scams and to report any suspicious activity.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive
• Education Level: No Education Listed