Director, Software Engineering

Own and continuously improve engineering processes across the SDLC — from planning and sprint execution through to deployment and incident management.

Drive adoption of engineering best practices: code review standards, testing strategy, CI/CD pipelines, and release processes.

Define and track meaningful engineering metrics (velocity, quality, deployment frequency, lead time) and use them to drive improvement.

Lead operational readiness, on-call practices, and engineering response to production incidents.

Provide technical direction and governance, ensuring architectural decisions are sound, scalable, and aligned with the broader platform strategy.

Actively participate in and guide technical design reviews, particularly for complex or cross-cutting concerns.

Maintain hands-on credibility — able to engage meaningfully in technical discussions on C#/.NET development, Azure Cloud architecture, and Azure DevOps pipelines.

Identify and drive resolution of technical debt that poses risk to delivery speed or system reliability.

Accountability for the India team's delivery commitments — ensuring features and platform work ship on time, at quality, and with predictability.

Partner with Product Management to translate roadmap priorities into well-structured engineering plans.

Proactively manage risks, dependencies, and blockers, escalating early and communicating with clarity.

15+ years in software engineering, with at least 5 years in engineering leadership (Engineering Manager, Senior EM, or Director level).

A strong technical foundation — you began your career as a software engineer and can engage credibly in technical discussions and decisions.

Hands-on background in C# and .NET development; you don't need to be writing production code daily, but you know it deeply.

Solid understanding of Microsoft Azure cloud services and Azure DevOps for CI/CD, pipelines, and engineering workflow.

Proven experience with SQL Server as a backend data platform, including schema design, query optimisation, and production operations.

Demonstrated ability to integrate Agentic AI into production systems (e.g. AI agents embedded in product features or operational pipelines).

Proven experience building and scaling engineering teams, ideally in a high-growth SaaS environment.

Experience leading distributed or globally integrated engineering teams, with a track record of making cross-timezone collaboration work well.

Strong command of agile delivery practices and modern software engineering processes.

Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills — equally comfortable presenting to a CTO or coaching a junior engineer.

Experience establishing a new engineering hub or centre of excellence from scratch.

Familiarity with platform/product engineering in a B2B SaaS context.

Exposure to data engineering, integrations, or API-first product development.

Experience with engineering hiring at scale in the India market.

Knowledge of compliance and security practices relevant to SaaS (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR).