Director, Engineering, AI Search

Description

The company is building a retrieval intelligence layer that turns user intent into trusted, measurable outcomes. Its platform handles over 1.7 trillion queries a year for more than 18,000 customers, with millisecond latency and 99.999% reliability. Top industry analysts recognise it as a leader in search and product discovery.

The platform turns a company's products, content, and business rules into data that people, applications, and AI agents can act on, leading to better customer experiences and higher conversions.

The Engineering team builds the core infrastructure and product features behind real-time search and discovery. Its work covers backend services, frontend components, site reliability, and ML-powered capabilities. The team is spread out, works collaboratively, and invests in technical depth and continuous learning.

This director role covers several engineering teams or one critical product area. You will work with Engineering Managers, Product, and Design to ship scalable, reliable solutions with high impact, turn company strategy into day-to-day execution, and build autonomous teams with strong engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Lead a group of engineering teams through Engineering Managers and Senior ICs, keeping them aligned with product and company priorities.
• Set the AI direction for the engineering organisation: build a habit of continuous improvement, assess new AI tools, and adopt the useful ones to raise productivity, efficiency, and performance across the wider technology function.
• Own delivery, execution, and operational excellence for a defined product or platform area.
• Work with Product, Design, and other cross-functional partners to shape roadmaps and deliver customer value.
• Set engineering standards for system design, scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Sit on the senior technology leadership team and contribute to engineering quality and performance across the global technology organisation, beyond your own area.
• Coach Engineering Managers and help them grow as leaders and build strong teams.
• Take part in organisational planning, including headcount, team structure, and quarterly and annual planning.
• Foster ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement across your organisation.
• Turn high-level goals into clear priorities for each team.
• Advise the CTO and SVP Engineering on engineering leadership, organisational effectiveness, and cross-functional management across the technology organisation.

Requirements

• Have 8 to 12+ years of engineering experience, including 3 to 5+ years managing several teams or managing through other managers.
• Have a record of delivering complex, cross-functional projects in a high-growth setting.
• Bring a strong technical background in distributed systems, APIs, and scalable infrastructure.
• Lead through others by empowering managers and senior engineers.
• Communicate well, align diverse stakeholders, and bring clarity to decisions.
• Have worked on engineering teams that are spread out or span the globe.
• Have experience in developer tools, infrastructure, or data platforms.
• Be familiar with product-led growth (PLG) environments.
• Have exposure to AI and ML-powered products or platforms.
• Live the company's values: grit to keep solving problems as the company changes, trust to rely on colleagues and own your work, candour to give and receive constructive feedback, care for teammates, customers, and the company's decisions, and humility to learn from others and set your ego aside.

Conditions

Annual base salary range is £160,000 - £200,000 GBP. Final pay depends on location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience, and base salary is one part of the total rewards package.

The company works flexibly and judges people on impact and output rather than where they sit. Many team members choose where and when they work.

Offices are in Paris, NYC, London, Sydney, and Bucharest. Remote roles are open only to people working remotely within the stated country. Roles tied to a city are only available in that city, on a hybrid-remote or in-office schedule depending on the role.

The company does not discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics.