VP Engineering

Scaleworks; Kraków; On-site; PLN 300,000 - 420,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Development fund

Contract flexibility

Job summary

Scaleworks is seeking an engineering leader for one of its portfolio companies in Kraków to ship production code and shape the engineering organisation. You will lead a small team while maintaining hands-on coding and owning AI-native development.

You will implement tooling, standards, and quality gates to improve throughput, with a focus on Python or Ruby and React exposure. You will not own product strategy, but will drive technical excellence and team growth.

Qualifications

• Led a small engineering team with delivery responsibility.
• Active hands-on coding and real ownership of shipped features.
• AI-native development with agents, evals, and model routing.
• Strong Python or Ruby skills; comfortable picking up others; React exposure.
• Clear, defensible views on code review and testing in AI-assisted codebase.

Responsibilities

• Ship code in live services and contribute to production readiness.
• Redesign how we build: tooling, agents, standards, quality gates to improve throughput.
• Shape team size and structure; decide what work to stop doing and hiring bar.
• Deliver customer-facing AI features within the product.
• Meet 30/60/90 day milestones and establish a plan for the team.

Skills

Led small engineering teams

Hands-on coding today

AI-native development

Python or Ruby

React exposure

Code review & testing standards

Tools

Python

Ruby

React

Job description

Who Are We?
Scaleworks is a software fund that acquires and invests in B2B SaaS companies. We are investors and operators who scale great products into great businesses. We apply a hands-on operational model where we take substantial positions in our investments, focus on markets we can lead in, and bring together teams of experienced B2B SaaS operators to help us get there. It puts businesses in a strong position to succeed, using low to no debt and reinvesting every dollar of profit back into growth.

For one of our portfolio companies, we are looking for:

Your role:

RESPONSIBILITIES AND HOW WE MEASURE

Weight

What they own

Measured by

30% Shipping code in live services Their own contribution visible in the repo, weekly

30% Rebuilding how we build. Tooling, agents, standards, quality gates Throughput per engineer up, QA and severity tickets down. Both, or it does not count

20% Team size and shape. What we stop doing, who stays, hiring bar Cost per unit of shipped output

20% AI inside the product, with the VP of Product Customer-facing AI features shipped

Does not own: product strategy or the roadmap (VP Product), a greenfield rewrite, a growing org.

90-DAY EXPECTATIONS

• Day 30 - Shipped in every major service. Can tell us where engineering time actually goes.
• Day 60 - New development method running on live work, with quality gates in place.
• Day 90 - Measurable throughput change, plus a 12-month plan for team size and shape.

Requirements:

Must have

• Has led a small engineering team and carried the outcome. Startup CTO, startup VP Engineering, or ran 5 to 15 engineers with delivery on their name
• Still writes and ships code today. Not "used to be technical"
• AI-native development as their actual working method, not a pilot. Agents doing real work, evals, model routing, AI-generated tests
• Can walk through a substantial project they shipped where a model wrote most of the code under their direction, and explain specifically how they made it trustworthy
• Strong in Python or Ruby, comfortable picking up the other. React exposure
• Has delivered with no budget and no spare headcount
• Clear, defensible views on code review and testing standards in an AI-assisted codebase

Nice to have

• Has merged or consolidated codebases from an acquisition
• Has shipped customer-facing AI features, not just internal tooling
• Has reduced team size while holding or improving output
• Has worked with a product leader as a genuine peer

Our offer:

• Development fund of 3k PLN per year per head
• Flexibility in choosing the type of contract