Director, Engineering

Job Description:

Responsibilities

• Lead and scale an elite global team of 40–50 engineers delivering platform innovation at enterprise scale.
• Drive adoption of AI-powered development practices and evolve engineering processes to leverage these capabilities.
• Partner with product, data, and AI teams to embed intelligence into platform components and user experiences.
• Guide the architecture, design, and optimization of the Aera platform to ensure scalability, maintainability, and performance.
• Maintain a hands-on technical presence (~30% of time) while spending 70% on leadership, mentorship, and execution oversight.
• Champion engineering excellence, ensuring high-quality releases, operational reliability, and measurable impact.
• Lead innovation tracks by developing prototypes that showcase emerging AI-driven functionality.Mentor and coach engineering leaders, fostering a high-performing, empowered, and motivated culture.
• Collaborate cross-functionally across product, SRE, QA, and business teams to deliver end-to-end value.
• Stay informed about emerging AI technologies, conduct internal research, and foster applied innovation to keep Aera at the forefront.

Qualification & Experience

• 16+ years of experience in software engineering, with deep expertise in Java, J2EE, distributed systems, and caching techniques.
• 6+ years in a leadership position managing large, high-performing teams within dynamic or start-up environments.
• Experience guiding teams that leverage AI tools and transforming engineering processes to take advantage of generative AI, coding assistants, and intelligent automation.
• Hands-on experience with Java, Python, SQL, data modeling, and scalable data architectures for high-volume environments.
• Familiarity with modern AI ecosystems — OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, LangChain, and vector databases.
• Proven experience in cloud computing platforms like AWS and Azure.Working knowledge of Kafka, VectorDB, and modern data pipelines.
• Exposure to modern JavaScript frameworks (React, Angular, Polymer, etc.) is a plus.
• Experience collaborating with global teams and operating within agile/scrum environments.
• Strong interpersonal and organizational skills, with the ability to influence across product, engineering, and executive leadership teams.
• Strong personal values, customer focus, and a passion for creating technology that makes a difference.