Director Product Engineering

Certinia; Harrogate; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology company in Harrogate is seeking a Director of Product Engineering to inspire and lead R&D teams. This role involves creating strategic directions, managing diverse teams, and ensuring delivery excellence while fostering a culture of innovation and technical prowess. The ideal candidate should possess extensive software engineering experience and deep technical knowledge in cloud platforms. A competitive compensation package and hybrid work model are offered.

Qualifications

• 12 years or more experience in software engineering.
• In-depth knowledge of cloud platforms and emerging technologies.
• Proven track record in leading cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Direct R&D functions with clear delivery goals.
• Manage multiple teams across various locations.
• Ensure engineering productivity and service ownership.

Skills

Leadership

Cloud Platforms Expertise

Strategic Management

Technical Knowledge

Team Management

Customer Management

Education

Degree in Computer Science or related field

Post Graduate qualification (e.g., MBA, PhD)

Job description

Director, Product Engineering
Harrogate, Hybrid

WHO WE ARE

Certinia delivers a Services-as-a-Business platform that powers and connects all aspects of services operations, from services estimation and delivery to customer success management and financial planning and accounting. The company’s Professional Services Automation (PSA), Customer Success (CS), and Financial Management (FM) solutions—delivered on Salesforce’s leading cloud platform—provide the ability to run a connected services business, deliver with intelligence, and achieve business agility. Headquartered in Austin, Texas with presence around the world, Certinia is backed by Haveli Investments, TA Associates, General Atlantic and Salesforce Ventures. For more information, visit www.certinia.com.

THE ROLE

We are seeking an accomplished Director, Product Engineering to lead and inspire our engineering teams. In this critical leadership role, you will be responsible for directing specifically identified functions within R&D, ensuring clear product or service delivery goals are met. You will balance strategic and tactical requirements, drive engineering excellence, and proactively align your function with corporate strategic goals. This role is ideal for a leader who thrives in a dynamic environment, is passionate about empowering teams, and possesses deep technical expertise.

WHAT YOU WILL DO IN THIS ROLE

* Strategic Direction & Vision: Direct a specifically identified functions within R&D with clear product or service delivery goals. Proactively help drive and understand corporate strategic goals, skilled in aligning the engineering function with those goals.
* Engineering Excellence & Productivity: Inspire and execute on strategies for engineering excellence at all levels. Ensure engineering productivity, service ownership, and customer success within the engineering teams. Balance feature delivery and retirement of technical debt across an entire development team.
* Organisational Design & Resource Management: Design and flexibly organise the engineering organisation and resources to support changing corporate objectives. Exercise management responsibility for multiple teams, and across multiple locations, in line with the nature of their service function.
* Delivery & Execution: Oversee that the delivery of the service function meets or exceeds all expectations and metrics. Using Lean principles, drive and deliver value delivery with data-driven feedback loops.
* Stakeholder & Leadership Interaction: Communicate corporate strategy to all employees within their specific function. Interact with all employees within their specific function, as well as with stakeholders and corporate leadership. Represent their function and speak competently on other functions with external entities like analysts and customers.
* People Leadership & Development: Promote an environment where people are empowered to deliver at their best. Manage, engage, and inspire individuals of different disciplines, grades, and calibre, including individuals of deep technical expertise, securing the best performance from each. Competent in managing other people managers.
* Budget & Compliance: Create and manage expenditures for budgets for all responsible departments/functions. Set a strong example on compliance with the corporate code of conduct and ensure compliance with other corporate policies and initiatives.
* Culture & Talent: Maintain and foster our culture by interviewing and hiring only the most qualified individuals with an eye towards diversity and inclusion. Vocally advocate for technical excellence and help teams make good decisions.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN THIS ROLE

* Degree qualified in a computer-related or scientific discipline. A Post Graduate qualification (e.g., MBA, PhD, MSc) is highly desirable.
* Demonstrable experience of managing people, typically 12 years or more in a software engineering discipline (software development, software design, architecture, etc.).
* In-depth knowledge and experience in cloud platforms for all company products.
* In-depth understanding of emerging technologies, applicability to [Company Name], and dependencies. Comprehensive knowledge of hardware, software, application, systems, and network engineering.
* Proven ability to create and deliver a successful product, technical, and architectural strategy factoring all aspects of a fully developed plan including technology, people, finance, and process. Experience of research and design of enterprise processes and tools using industry best practices.
* Strong leadership anticipation and coordination skills. Ability to influence, interact, and educate senior leadership and other senior peers. Visible to the engineering organisation, offering strategy vision and explanation in a clear and understandable way, energetic and enthusiastic.
* Takes autonomous decisions on a constant basis, including those regarding defining or executing against corporate strategy. Owns and makes decisions on instances of a mission-critical service. Uses telemetry and metrics to drive operational excellence.
* Strategic management, leadership anticipation and coordination, customer management, leadership development, and complexity management.