Director of Engineering
Lisbon, Portugal (Hybrid)
Lead Engineering. Shape Culture. Drive the Future of AI-Enabled Software Development.
We're partnering with a fast-growing international technology company to appoint a Director of Engineering to lead one of its most strategic engineering organisations based in Lisbon.
This is far more than a people management position.
As the most senior engineering leader in Portugal, you'll be responsible for developing engineering managers, scaling high-performing teams, influencing technical direction, and helping define how modern engineering organisations leverage AI to build better products.
You'll work closely with executive leadership while creating an environment where engineering excellence, innovation and collaboration thrive.
The Opportunity
You'll lead multiple engineering teams responsible for critical product and platform capabilities that directly impact customer growth, product adoption and engineering scalability.
Current strategic initiatives include:
- Scaling platform infrastructure to support future product growth and regional expansion.
- Improving onboarding, activation and user engagement across a growing product portfolio.
- Modernising monetisation capabilities through scalable architecture and self-service platforms.
- Strengthening engineering productivity through better tooling, testing infrastructure and developer experience.
- Accelerating the adoption of AI across the software development lifecycle to improve engineering effectiveness.
Beyond technology, you'll play a key role in strengthening engineering culture, coaching engineering leaders, and helping Lisbon continue to grow as a strategic engineering hub within the organisation.
What You'll Do
- Lead and coach Engineering Managers responsible for approximately 30–35 software engineers across multiple engineering teams.
- Build high-performing leadership teams through mentoring, coaching and clear accountability.
- Foster an engaged, collaborative engineering culture within a distributed international organisation.
- Partner closely with Product, Design and executive stakeholders to translate business priorities into engineering strategy.
- Provide technical leadership by contributing to architecture discussions, challenging engineering decisions and supporting technical leaders.
- Drive improvements in engineering practices, delivery predictability, operational excellence and team effectiveness.
- Champion practical AI adoption across engineering, helping teams move beyond experimentation towards measurable impact.
- Represent the engineering organisation externally, contributing to the local technology community and strengthening employer branding.
What We're Looking For
We're interested in leaders who have successfully built organisations—not simply managed teams.
You'll likely bring experience in:
- Leading Engineering Managers within modern software engineering organisations.
- Scaling engineering teams in product-led, SaaS or high-growth technology environments.
- Managing organisational change while maintaining strong delivery and engineering quality.
- Influencing technical strategy without needing to be hands-on in day-to-day development.
- Building engineering cultures focused on ownership, collaboration and continuous improvement.
- Working effectively with executive stakeholders across international organisations.
- Driving adoption of AI-enabled engineering practices and modern software development workflows.
- Acting as a visible leader who enjoys mentoring, sharing knowledge and strengthening engineering communities.
Experience in cybersecurity is welcome but not essential.
What Success Looks Like
Within your first year, you'll have:
- Built trusted relationships across engineering and executive leadership.
- Developed Engineering Managers into stronger leaders.
- Increased engagement and collaboration across the Lisbon engineering organisation.
- Improved engineering effectiveness through better processes, tooling and delivery practices.
- Helped establish AI as an integral part of day-to-day engineering workflows.
- Strengthened Lisbon's reputation as a key engineering hub within the global organisation.
Why Join?
This is an opportunity to influence both technology and people at scale.
You'll join a company that combines the stability of an established international product business with the pace, autonomy and ambition of a scaling technology organisation.
If you're excited by building exceptional engineering teams, enabling technical leaders to thrive, and helping shape the future of AI-enabled software development, we'd love to have a confidential conversation.
For a confidential discussion, please contact:
Fabienne Viegas
