Director of Engineering (London)

Netcraft is the global leader in cybercrime detection and disruption. We’re a trusted partner for three of the four largest companies in the world and many large country governments. We’ve blocked more than 200 million malicious sites and perform takedowns for around one-third of the world’s phishing sites. Our purpose, passion, and expertise are focused on just one thing: protecting the world from cybercrime. Our passion doesn’t stop at what we do—it shapes how we work, too. We’re proud of our talented team and the value each person brings. That’s why we’ve created a workplace where people feel supported and inspired, from great benefits and wellness programs to fun social events.

The role involves overseeing the Engineering team that owns our latest generation client-facing interfaces and is responsible for delivering a unified, customer-centric vision for Netcraft services.

You’ll be:

• An Inspirational Leader: You possess strong people-leadership skills, capable of building trust, earning respect, and driving high performance within your teams. You excel at mentoring and developing talent, particularly engineering managers.
• A Strategic Thinker: You balance pragmatism, commercial understanding, and deep technological insight. You are adept at driving innovation and achieving results while effectively managing technical debt and ensuring robust security.
• An Exceptional Communicator & Collaborator: You excel in communication and relationship management, fostering strong, collaborative partnerships across all organizational levels and with external stakeholders.
• Adaptable & Solution-Oriented: You maintain a highly flexible, proactive, and solution-focused approach, confidently navigating ambiguity and complex challenges to deliver effective outcomes. You are a proven executor and have a history of successfully creating and delivering front-end projects from the ground up.
• A Culture Champion: You actively cultivate and promote a positive, inclusive, creative, and exploratory culture within the engineering team, aligning with and contributing to the broader company culture.

What you’ll need to be successful:

• Extensive Experience: Demonstrable track record in a senior engineering leadership role (e.g., Director, Head of, etc) within a dynamic SaaS environment, ideally at a high-growth scaleup.
• Team Scalability: Proven ability to lead and structure a multi-faceted engineering department comprising multiple teams, primarily through managing and mentoring other team leads and senior ICs.
• Talent Management: Expertise in recruiting, developing, mentoring, and retaining diverse, high-calibre engineering talent across various disciplines. You are skilled in fostering autonomous, engaged, and high-performing teams.
• Vision & Execution: Ability to define, articulate, and execute a compelling long-term technological vision and strategy that aligns with and drives business goals, keeping abreast of emerging technologies and assessing their strategic relevance.
• Technical Acumen: Deep understanding of modern technical architecture and infrastructure principles, with experience leading decisions that ensure scalability, security, performance, and reliability of systems. You have proven experience in architectural design for complex frontend systems.
• Innovation & R&D: A passion for continuous innovation, with experience leading research and development (R&D) efforts, experimenting with new applications, and fostering a culture of creativity.
• Product Development & Delivery Full Lifecycle Ownership: Proficiency in driving the end-to-end product development lifecycle, from conceptualisation and design through to launch and iteration, particularly in contexts where an independent product function isn’t established.
• Cross-Functional Product Collaboration: Ability to collaborate effectively with internal stakeholders and Product Owners to define product requirements, translate business needs into technical solutions, and deliver user-centric products.
• Operational Excellence & Strategic Execution: Skilled in leading departmental strategy and planning, contributing to company-wide objectives (e.g., OKRs), and successfully delivering on the Engineering Roadmap in collaboration with the Leadership Team.
• Engineering Initiatives: Experience designing, championing, and delivering impactful engineering-wide initiatives to enhance efficiency, knowledge sharing, team morale, diversity, and overall engagement.
• Quality, Cybersecurity & Risk Management: Experience with establishing and overseeing qualitative and security/risk controls across a front-end estate to protect data and systems.
• Process & Standards: Proven ability to establish and maintain a strong engineering culture, best practices, and operational standards for reliable and efficient software delivery.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration & Business Impact: Demonstrated ability to partner closely with Leadership Team colleagues and other cross-functional stakeholders to define business needs, inform strategic engineering decisions, and ensure alignment.
• Dependency Management: Adept at identifying, coordinating, and resolving dependencies between your engineering teams and other departments.
• Performance & Reporting: Strong understanding of engineering performance metrics, with the ability to define, measure, report on, and use data to assess and improve outcomes. This includes supporting the preparation of budgets, reports, and Board meeting materials.
• Vendor & Partner Management: Experience fostering strategic partnerships with technology vendors and industry leaders to maintain a competitive edge and explore new opportunities.
• Prioritisation & Triage: Ability to manage multiple workstreams and deadlines concurrently, prioritising deliverables effectively, and efficiently triaging development requests alongside product managers or owners.

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience working with or supporting front-end design systems, especially with component libraries like Storybook.
• Full-stack or back-end experience, as a developer and/or manager, particularly with regard to database and API ownership.

The reward package includes an excellent range of benefits such as hybrid and flexible working options, a minimum of 33 days holiday per annum (including public holidays), pension scheme membership with 4% employer contributions, private health cover, equity tracking scheme, comprehensive wellness and support provisions, enhanced family leave provisions, life assurance, two days paid volunteering leave per year, free meals, drinks and snacks provided daily in the offices, regular social events, an inclusive culture and environment, and a tax-efficient cycle to work scheme.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is very important to us and through our ally network we support under-represented groups. We seek to maintain a working environment that is free from bias, harassment or discrimination, and we encourage candidates from any background to apply, regardless of their gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, ability/disability, age, religion, or any other specific characteristics. We’re happy to make adjustments to our hiring process to ensure that all candidates can participate fully and comfortably.