Overview
You lead a ~50-person product engineering organization for HR Total Rewards, shaping the product vision and building autonomous pods. You remain hands-on with coding and prototyping while scaling governance, talent, and budgets. You will oversee a mix of custom-built systems and numerous SaaS apps, driving an AI-enabled workforce transformation. This role combines strategic leadership with deep technical judgment to accelerate delivery and ensure responsible AI usage. You’ll partner with executives to translate strategy into measurable outcomes and real business value.
Responsibilities
- Lead a ~50-person product engineering organization across multiple autonomous pods and enabling teams, owning delivery health and talent development
- Create leadership systems, define goals, rhythms, reviews, and risk surfaces to minimize process drag
- Align priorities and decision rights across teams; establish engineering standards and responsible AI delivery
- Represent the org with senior stakeholders, translating strategy into delivery commitments and ensuring executive visibility
- Oversee workforce planning, hiring strategy, vendor mix, succession planning, and budget tradeoffs
- Oversee third-party SaaS applications with governance, secure integrations, and operational resilience
- Lead AI-enabled workforce transformation across the organization and embed AI into planning, building, testing, and decision-making
- Set architectural principles, guardrails, security expectations, and delivery standards for speed and safety
- Remain hands-on enough to review code, prototype, validate AI outputs, and coach leadership on technical quality
- Develop the team and operating model; coach leaders, map skills, and enable career growth
Key requirements
- Experience leading a multi-team product engineering organization with managers and cross-functional delivery groups
- Executive-level player-coach ability; close enough to product and engineering detail to improve decisions while scaling through leaders
- Track record of attracting, developing, and retaining talent; succession planning and leadership development
- Experience managing budgets, capacity, hiring plans, and vendor/resource strategy in complex matrixed environments
- Oversight of a complex SaaS portfolio, vendor governance, lifecycle management, and integration strategy
- Proven ability to lead enterprise transformation programs, especially AI-enabled workforce adoption
- Hands-on ability to write code, prototype, review pull requests, and validate AI-assisted outputs
- Bachelor's degree in a relevant field (advanced degree a plus)
- Observant
- Curious
- Determined
- AI-assisted development
- Cloud-native architectures
- Docker
Head of Product Engineering, HR Total Rewards - Director in London employer: Citigroup
Citi is an exceptional employer, offering a dynamic work environment in the heart of London where innovation meets collaboration. As a Sales Director, you will benefit from extensive training and mentorship opportunities, fostering your professional growth while working alongside industry leaders in FX Sales. With a strong commitment to integrity and inclusivity, Citi provides a supportive culture that empowers employees to excel and drive meaningful results for clients.
