Our client, a rapidly scaling fintech, is seeking an exceptional Vice President of Software Engineering to lead and evolve a large, high-performing engineering organisation. This role sits at the intersection of technical leadership, organisational scale, and AI driven innovation. You will take ownership of an engineering function of 100-120 Software Engineers, supported by 6 Software Engineering Managers, and play a central role in shaping both capability and culture during a critical growth phase. This is a true player coach position-requiring deep technical credibility alongside proven leadership at scale.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead, develop, and scale a multi layered engineering organisation, ensuring strong leadership at every level.
- Own delivery against a complex product roadmap, driving measurable business outcomes.
- Define engineering strategy, architecture, and organisational design aligned to growth objectives.
- Maintain hands on technical engagement, contributing to high level design and decision making.
- Champion AI first engineering practices, building on an environment where 80-90% of code is AI generated, with a roadmap to 95%+.
- Embed modern engineering excellence (CI/CD, trunk based development, observability, and automated testing).
- Partner cross functionally across Product, DevOps, Security, and Platform teams.
- Build a high performance culture grounded in accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.
Leadership & Scale
- 8+ years in software engineering leadership roles, with at least 3+ years operating at VP level (or equivalent).
- Proven experience leading large scale engineering organisations (minimum 50+ engineers).
- Demonstrated success as a manager of managers, including developing senior engineering leaders.
- Track record of scaling teams and capabilities in high growth environments, ideally within startups or SME organisations.
Technical Expertise
- Strong hands on engineering background with the ability to remain technically engaged.
- Deep technical fluency across modern architectures and polyglot environments (including .NET/C#, with exposure to other languages such as Java or Ruby).
- Experience defining architecture and engineering strategy at scale.
- Ability to challenge, guide, and influence technical decisions at all levels.
AI & Modern Engineering Practices (Critical)
- Proven experience working in an AI enabled or AI first engineering environment.
- Hands on use of AI assisted or agentic development tools (e.g. Claude or similar).
- Clear understanding of how AI can accelerate delivery, improve quality, and reshape engineering workflows.
- Experience driving adoption of AI tooling across teams and embedding it into the development lifecycle.
Delivery & Engineering Excellence
- Strong background in continuous delivery environments, where software is shipped to production frequently or daily.
- Expertise in modern practices including CI/CD pipelines, trunk based development, automated testing strategies, observability and system reliability.
- Proven ability to use engineering metrics to drive performance and continuous improvement.
Organisational Design & Methodologies
- Experience designing and evolving engineering organisations using modern frameworks (e.g. Lean, Scrum, Kanban, XP).
- Strong understanding of team topologies (stream aligned, platform, enabling teams).
- Ability to align organisational structure to product and delivery needs.
Leadership Mindset & Approach
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence executive stakeholders.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast moving environments.
- Strong problem solving mindset with a willingness to experiment and iterate.
- Values transparency, continuous learning, and candid feedback.
- Demonstrates curiosity, innovation, and the ability to identify novel solutions to complex challenges.
Why This Role?
- Opportunity to lead a large, complex engineering function at scale.
- Significant influence over the evolution of AI driven software development practices.
- Join a high growth fintech at a pivotal stage of its journey.
- Work in an environment where engineering excellence and innovation are core to success.
If you are a technically credible engineering leader with experience scaling teams, embedding AI into development, and delivering at pace, this is a rare opportunity to make a significant impact.
