Vice President Software Engineering

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.