Director of Engineering

What do we do?

Paddle offers digital product companies a completely different approach to their payment infrastructure. Instead of assembling and maintaining a complex stack of payments-related apps and services, we’re a Merchant of Record for our customers. That means we take away 100% of the pain of payment fragmentation. It’s faster, safer, cheaper, and, above all, way better. 

We’re backed by investors including KKR, FTV Capital, Kindred, Notion, and 83North and serve over 5000 software sellers in 245 territories globally. 

The role:  

As a Director of Engineering, you will be responsible for driving the performance, growth, and alignment of a group of product engineering teams while collaborating closely with cross-functional stakeholders to deliver business impact.

In this role, you will manage the Engineering Managers of the teams within your group and work in partnership with the group Product leader to set the group’s strategy and execute against its goals. You’ll ensure the group works effectively across the broader Product & Engineering organisation and with other departments to deliver high-quality outcomes aligned with our business priorities.

What you'll do: 

Leadership and Team Management:

• Lead and mentor the engineering managers of the product engineering teams in the group, helping them grow into stronger leaders for their teams.

• Foster a high-performance culture, ensuring that teams are empowered, supported, agile and that they consistently deliver high quality software 

• Build a collaborative environment where managers and engineers feel psychologically safe, valued, and able to deliver their best work.

Strategic Alignment and Delivery:

• Partner with the group Product leader to set the strategic direction, lead roadmap planning, and prioritise deliverables for the group.

• Define and execute the engineering vision for the group in alignment with the overall department and company objectives.

• Ensure teams are aligned on business goals, balancing short-term delivery needs with long-term technical strategy.

Collaboration and Stakeholder Management:

• Ensure your teams work effectively with other groups across Product & Engineering to ensure smooth collaboration and alignment on dependencies and deliverables.

• Act as a key stakeholder representative for your group in discussions with other departments, including Sales, Customer Success, and Finance.

• Ensure clear communication of progress, challenges, and opportunities between the group and its stakeholders.

Engineering Excellence:

• Drive a culture of technical excellence across the group and the wider engineering department, ensuring engineering practices and tooling are continuously improved.

• Identify and address inefficiencies to optimise speed and predictability of delivery across teams.

• Champion knowledge sharing and reduce silos by encouraging collaboration between teams both within your group and across the rest of the department.

Scaling and Growth:

• Collaborate with Talent and People teams to recruit and onboard new engineers and managers into the group as it scales.

• Ensure the group’s structure and headcount plans align with current and future business needs.

We'd love to hear from you if you:

• Are an experienced senior engineering leader with a track record of leading an organisation of 20-50 individuals, including managing engineering leaders.

• Have an engineering background with experience in large scale, web based B2B or B2C platforms. Fintech experience is of particular interest, but not required or expected.

• Have experience growing, managing and retaining high performing, healthy engineering teams

• Have hands-on programming experience as an individual contributor from earlier in your career.

• Thrive when working with ambiguous problems with a high degree of autonomy

• Have experience working cross-functionally with Product, Commercial and Customer Success to optimise the output of your teams

• Have a passion for coaching and developing people

• Have excellent communication,  stakeholder management and organisational skills

Everyone is welcome at Paddle

At Paddle, we’re committed to removing invisible barriers, both for our customers and within our own teams. We recognise and celebrate that every Paddler is unique and we welcome every individual perspective. 

As an inclusive employer, we don’t care if, or where, you studied, what you look like or where you’re from. We’re more interested in your craft, curiosity, passion for learning and what you’ll add to our culture. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t match every part of the job ad, especially if you’re part of an underrepresented group.

Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to better support you through the application process and in the workplace. We will do everything we can to support any accommodations needed. We’re committed to building a diverse team where everyone feels safe to be their authentic self. Let’s grow together. 

Why you’ll love working at Paddle

We are a diverse, growing group of Paddlers across the globe who pride ourselves on our transparent, collaborative and respectful culture. 

We live and breathe our values, which are:

Paddle for others

Paddle together

Paddle simply

We offer a full suite of benefits, including attractive salaries, stock options, retirement plans, private healthcare and well-being initiatives. 

We are a ‘digital-first’ company, which means you can work remotely, from one of our stylish  hubs, or even a bit of both! We offer all team members unlimited holidays and enhanced parental leave. We invest in learning and will help you with your personal development via constant exposure to new challenges, an annual learning fund, and regular internal and external training.