Director of Engineering (m/f/d)
Job Purpose The Director of Engineering is responsible for building, scaling, and leading a high-performing engineering organization that delivers secure, scalable, and business-critical digital platforms. This role serves as the operational leader of the engineering function, partnering closely with the CTO to establish the organizational structure, operating model, delivery governance, and leadership capability required to support rapid business growth. A key objective of the role is to transform engineering into a highly accountable, delivery-focused organization by implementing effective squad structures, resource planning models, performance frameworks, and engineering leadership layers. The successful candidate will enable the CTO to focus on strategic technology direction by assuming ownership of engineering operations, workforce planning, people leadership, and delivery execution. The Director of Engineering will combine organizational leadership with deep technical credibility, ensuring engineering teams deliver reliable, secure, scalable, and high-performing software solutions aligned to business objectives. Key Responsibilities - Engineering Organizational Leadership - Design and implement a scalable engineering operating model aligned to business growth objectives. - Establish clear team structures, reporting lines, ownership boundaries, and accountability frameworks across engineering. - Build and develop Engineering Managers, Technical Leads, Architects, and senior engineering talent. - Define workforce planning strategies, hiring plans, succession planning, and organizational growth roadmaps. - Create a culture of accountability, ownership, performance, and continuous improvement. Squad & Delivery Model Transformation - Design and implement squad, tribe, pod, or domain-based engineering structures. - Define ownership models across products, platforms, services, and technology domains. - Drive delivery predictability through capacity planning, resource allocation, prioritization, and execution governance. - Establish portfolio planning and delivery review processes across multiple initiatives and teams. - Create engineering KPIs, operational scorecards, and performance reporting mechanisms. Delivery Governance & Execution - Own engineering delivery across all software development initiatives. - Ensure effective planning, estimation, prioritization, and execution of strategic technology programs. - Drive continuous improvement in engineering productivity, quality, release management, and operational efficiency. - Establish governance for delivery management, risk management, dependencies, and escalation processes. - Partner with Product, Business, and Technology stakeholders to align roadmaps and delivery commitments. Technology Leadership - Provide technical leadership across software architecture, engineering practices, and platform modernization initiatives. - Drive adoption of modern engineering practices including Agile, DevSecOps, CI/CD, cloud-native architectures, observability, and automation. - Support the design and delivery of highly available, scalable, secure, and resilient enterprise platforms. - Ensure engineering decisions align with long-term technology strategy and business objectives. - Provide guidance and challenge architecture decisions where appropriate. People Leadership - Lead, mentor, and develop engineering leaders and managers. - Establish engineering career frameworks, performance management processes, and talent development programs. - Build leadership capability and succession pipelines across engineering teams. - Foster collaboration, engagement, knowledge sharing, and high-performance team culture. - Drive employee retention, professional growth, and leadership development initiatives. Executive Partnership - Act as the primary operational leader for the engineering organization. - Partner closely with the CTO on techno