The engineering-director search could wait.
I had delayed replying while I refined what I thought Reonomy actually needed. The original plan was to hire one director. The new plan was to write a different role and look for two or three team leads first.
That was not a permanent rejection of the director role. I was holding it off while the engineering organization took its next step.
The team had been changing quickly. We had just moved into a new office, handled a couple of departures, and reset some of the daily leadership work. I was still buttoning up the office and the team communication at the same time. The job description could not be treated as a generic slot that we filled because the title sounded right.
Several leads would put leadership inside the working teams. One director would create a different shape. At that moment, I preferred the first shape.
I did not want to push the old search forward just because people were ready to help with it. The spec still had to match what I wanted. The most honest update I could send was that I had changed the plan.
I told the people helping with the search that it was not the immediate priority. Give me two weeks. I would write the team-lead spec, then come back when it was ready.
It was a small correction in an email and a larger change to the hiring work. We needed a role that matched the team in front of us, not the org chart we had imagined a few weeks earlier.
For now: two or three leads, no director, and two weeks to write it down properly.