Director of Engineering

DataFin Recruitment; Remote; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading software development agency in London seeks an Engineering Leader to manage engineering delivery across client projects. The successful candidate will coach a distributed team, implement engineering standards, and operationalize AI in real products. Applicants should have extensive experience in software engineering, particularly in agency settings, along with expertise in modern tech stacks and cloud services. This role offers a unique opportunity for impactful innovation with global clients.

Qualifications

• 12-18 years in software engineering with 5+ years leading multi-squad delivery.
• Proven track record building engineering standards/platforms.
• Deep expertise in at least one modern stack and strong cloud fundamentals.

Responsibilities

• Own engineering delivery across multiple client projects.
• Operationalise AI in real products.
• Lead and mentor a distributed team.

Skills

Software engineering leadership

Technical risk management

Stakeholder management

Cloud computing

AI operationalization

Tools

CI/CD

IaC

TypeScript/Node

React/Next.js

AWS

Job description

ENVIRONMENT

Our client, a London‑headquartered software development agency, delivers cutting‑edge web and AI solutions for a diverse range of international clients, from VC‑backed startups to established enterprises. With a delivery team primarily based in the Philippines and one team member in South Africa, they are now seeking a South Africa‑based Engineering Leader to partner with their fractional CTO in driving execution, maintaining engineering standards, and fostering team growth. This is a unique opportunity to shape the development process, lead a distributed team, and have a direct impact on high‑profile, innovative projects.

DUTIES

Role Summary

Own engineering delivery across multiple client projects. Define the “golden path” (standards, templates, CI/CD, IaC, quality gates, security). Be hands‑on when it matters – reading/writing code, reviewing architectures, unblocking risk. Operationalise AI in real products. Grow and mentor a distributed team (PH + a small SA nucleus).

• Own delivery & engineering management: Plan, staff and ship reliably across parallel client engagements; surface and manage technical risk.

• Be hands‑on when needed: Dive into code/architecture, run design reviews, pair on hard problems.

• Stand up the golden path: Establish secure SDLC, repo templates/monorepo strategy, CI/CD, infrastructure‑as‑code, observability, QA/UAT and release practices.

• Operationalise AI: Introduce standard patterns for RAG/agents, prompt/guardrail/eval workflows, data/privacy reviews and cost monitoring.

• Lead people & culture: Coach tech leads and ICs in the Philippines; hire and grow 2–4 SA engineers over time; set clear expectations, feedback and progression.

• Face clients when required: Support discovery, solutioning and estimates; handle tough trade‑offs and communicate with non‑technical stakeholders.

• Partner with the fractional CTO: Align on tech strategy and radar; you own day‑to‑day execution.

First 3‑6 months

• Engineering playbook and reusable templates live; projects migrated onto the golden path.

• Project health dashboard running (lead time, deploy frequency, change fail %, MTTR, plus margin signals).

• Security/privacy baseline in place (secrets, PII handling, GDPR/POPIA, AI usage policy).

• Two flagship client projects measurably faster and more reliable (e.g. 25%+ PR cycle‑time reduction; doubled deploy frequency).

REQUIREMENTS

• 12‑18 years in software engineering with 5+ years leading multi‑squad delivery (agency/consulting strongly preferred).

• Proven track record building engineering standards/platforms (pipelines, monorepos, IaC, SRE/observability).

• Deep expertise in at least one modern stack (e.g. TypeScript/Node, React/Next.js, NestJS) and strong cloud fundamentals (AWS preferred).

• Comfortable shipping LLM/AI features in production (OpenAI/Azure OpenAI, vector stores, retrieval patterns, evals/guardrails).

• Excellent stakeholder management; confident with clients and execs.

• Experienced leading distributed teams across time zones (UK + PH) and able to jump into code when stakes are high.