Director of Engineering

About the role

The Director of Engineering is a senior leadership role at Robots & Pencils, responsible for the technical health, delivery performance, and talent growth of a geographically aligned engineering organization. This is a director-level position with regional P&L accountability, client-facing responsibility, and direct influence over how R&P delivers AI-forward engineering at scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and grow a geographically aligned engineering organization, developing technical talent and the next layer of engineering leaders.
• Champion adoption of AI-forward tools and AI-assisted delivery, raising both velocity and expertise.
• Partner with sales, verticals, and practice leaders to align engineering capacity with business demand and staff teams with the right skills and experience.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement, where engineers verify and stand behind AI-assisted work.
• Drive adoption of engineering standards, security requirements, and quality practices across an AI-augmented software development lifecycle.
• Use data to manage delivery performance, resource utilization, and team health, layering AI-assisted delivery signals onto core engineering metrics.
• Build team AI capability through coaching, upskilling, and knowledge sharing, leaving no engineer behind as tools and practices evolve.
• Support workforce planning, recruiting, onboarding, performance management, and succession planning for future technical leaders.
• Collaborate with other Engineering Directors and Managers to keep standards consistent across regions, and escalate and resolve staffing, delivery, and personnel challenges as needed.
• Own regional P&L, including revenue accountability, margin performance, and resource investment decisions for the engineering organization.
• Actively participate in recruiting and interviewing for senior technical roles, evaluating candidates against both technical and cultural standards and partnering with Talent to build engineering hiring pipelines.
• Set the standard for AI-forward engineering practice — using tools like Claude and Cursor with sophistication, modeling what great looks like, and helping the team adopt AI tools effectively and with confidence.
• Lead the design and delivery of AI/ML systems end-to-end, from architecture decisions through production deployment, bringing both strategic vision and hands-on judgment to every phase.

What You’ll Bring

• 10+ years of overall engineering experience, including at least 3 years in an Engineering Manager or Director role leading multi-person technical teams, with a hands-on background building software and leading projects earlier in your career.
• Strong people leadership, coaching, and talent development skills, with a track record of building high-performing teams.
• A working understanding of modern software development, cloud platforms, and AI-assisted engineering practices.
• Extremely strong AI and agentic development skills — not just familiarity but the ability to teach others, set standards, and create measurable impact at the client level using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other AI-forward platforms.
• Experience managing distributed or geographically dispersed teams and aligning capacity with shifting demand.
• Fluency with engineering metrics and data-informed delivery management.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and organizational skills.
• A consulting mindset, whether through direct experience at a firm or in a role servicing external clients or internal business units — you understand how to earn trust, manage expectations, and deliver value in client-facing contexts.
• A strong focus on team and talent development, with a demonstrated ability to grow engineers into leaders and build high-trust, high-performance teams over time.
• An AI-forward thinker who stays ahead of the curve, brings genuine enthusiasm for what’s possible, and can translate that into practical outcomes for clients and the team.
• A strategic thinker with a bias for action — you can set direction, build a plan, and then roll up your sleeves to make it happen without waiting for perfect conditions.
• A practical hands-on skills in leading the design and delivery of AI/ML systems, including agentic architectures, LLM integration, and production deployment on modern cloud platforms.