Director of Engineering

Imagine Learning is expanding its global engineering footprint with a new centre in India, and we are seeking a Director of Software Engineering to build, lead, and scale this organisation. This leader will be one of the earliest foundational hires responsible for establishing the engineering culture, hiring top talent, driving technical excellence, and delivering highly scalable and reliable B2C products used by millions of learners. You must be a hands-on technical leader who has personally architected, developed, and shipped complex, high-scale systems. You will play a dual role as an organisational builder and a senior technologist who can guide engineering direction, ensure quality, and set strong engineering standards.

Responsibilities:

• Build and scale the India-based software engineering organisation from the ground up.
• Hire, mentor, and develop high-performing engineering teams, including engineering managers and senior ICs.
• Oversee performance management, promotions, rewards, and organisational structure.
• Create a culture of accountability, innovation, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Oversee a blended team of FTEs and contractors, managing budgets effectively while ensuring strong delivery metrics
• Provide architectural leadership for building modern, scalable, secure, and resilient B2C products.
• Stay hands-on with code reviews, design reviews, and technical deep dives as needed.
• Drive technical decision-making, including tooling, frameworks, design patterns, and modernisation.
• Ensure best practices in coding, testing, CI/CD, observability, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Partner closely with Product, UX, Data, and Operations teams to deliver high-quality product experiences.
• Translate business needs into clear technical requirements and execution plans.
• Ensure customer feedback and metrics directly influence prioritisation and solution design.
• Guide the evaluation and improvement of both new and existing systems.
• Establish engineering processes based on Agile and lean delivery methodologies.
• Ensure smooth delivery of features, releases, and ongoing platform enhancements.
• Maintain high standards for uptime, reliability, scalability, and platform health.
• Promote best practices throughout the SDLC and champion engineering quality.

Requirements:

• 14+ years of relevant software engineering experience.
• 8+ years as a Senior Software Engineer building production systems.
• 6+ years of engineering management experience leading teams and managers.
• Hands-on experience architecting and developing high-scale, high-availability B2C applications.
• Proficiency in modern web development technologies, including: HTML5 CSS3 JavaScript, REST, Microservices, React, Java, C#, ASP. NET,. NET Core.
• Deep experience with databases: SQL: SQL Server, PostgreSQL, NoSQL: MongoDB, In-memory: Redis.
• Strong experience developing and deploying on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Strong Experience in LLM, MLOps, Data and AI platforms and operations.

Competencies:

• Proven experience hiring and developing engineering teams in high-growth environments.
• Ability to think strategically, communicate crisply, and influence at all levels.