Hackajob is collaborating with American Express to connect them with exceptional tech professionals for this role.
We're looking for a Director, Software Engineering to lead the delivery of a critical, distributed Accounts Receivable platform supporting multiple global markets. This role exists to own outcomes: scaling teams, strengthening execution, and ensuring we successfully migrate markets from legacy mainframe systems to a modern, event-driven platform. In addition, the role offers the opportunity to collaborate closely with peers and senior leaders to help shape the future technical direction and engineering culture of a large, fast-paced organisation committed to modern software development practices and building high-performing teams.
This is a leadership role for an experienced engineering leader with strong software engineering principles. You will be closely involved in shaping how teams work and how the platform evolves—advocating for clear domain ownership, sound technical practices, and sustainable delivery. You'll stay close to the work through design reviews and technical discussions, bringing expert-level software engineering experience and the ability to read, understand, and reason about production code.
You'll partner closely with Product, Program Management, Architecture, and senior stakeholders to turn long-running transformation goals into clear priorities, predictable delivery, and meaningful business impact.
How will you make an impact in this role?
Owning Delivery and Outcomes
Lead three cross-functional engineering teams delivering a distributed, Java-based, event-sourced and event-driven platform used across multiple markets.
Own delivery for major platform initiatives, including migration onto the new platform.
Translate strategic goals into clear execution plans, milestones, and measurable outcomes, adjusting scope and sequencing as needed.
Ensure delivery is predictable and sustainable, balancing speed, quality, resilience, and operational excellence.
Act as an escalation point when delivery is at risk—removing impediments, aligning stakeholders, and making pragmatic trade-offs.
Leading with Strong Engineering Principles
Champion Domain-Driven Design, ensuring domain boundaries, ownership, and language are clear and aligned with the business.
Apply Lean and Agile software engineering principles to improve flow, reduce waste, and enable teams to deliver value continuously.
Advocate for platform needs—technical health, resilience, and long-term evolution—in collaboration with Product and Program Management.
Support teams in making informed decisions that balance near-term delivery with long-term platform sustainability.
Leading and Growing People
Build, coach, and retain high-performing engineering teams, with a strong focus on engagement, clarity, and psychological safety.
Develop Engineering Managers and senior engineers through regular feedback, coaching, and career development.
Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Ensure teams are structured and staffed to meet both current delivery commitments and future platform needs.
Providing Pragmatic Technical Leadership
Bring strong technical judgment to guide teams through complex delivery and design decisions in distributed, event-driven systems.
Partner with Architects and senior engineers to evolve the platform through collaborative design, review, and iteration.
Stay close enough to the work to ask the right questions, review critical designs, and unblock teams when needed.
Ensure high standards for quality, testing, observability, and operational readiness in a cloud-native environment.
Partnering Across the Organisation
Work closely with Product and Program Management to align priorities, scope, and sequencing—ensuring engineering effort maps clearly to business outcomes.
Collaborate with platform, operations, and enabling teams to deliver consistently at scale across markets.
Communicate clearly with senior stakeholders, providing transparency on progress, risks, dependencies, and trade-offs.
Minimum Qualifications
Proven experience as an Engineering Director or senior Engineering Manager leading multiple teams (roughly 15-30 engineers).
Expert-level software engineering background, with deep prior experience designing, building, and operating complex systems at scale.
Strong grounding in Domain-Driven Design, Lean, and Agile software engineering principles, applied in real-world, complex environments.
A track record of owning delivery outcomes for large, multi-team initiatives.
Experience building and operating distributed, event-driven or event-sourced systems, ideally in Java-based ecosystems.
Demonstrated ability to advocate effectively for teams and platform requirements in cross-functional forums.
Strong people leadership skills, including coaching Engineering Managers and developing senior engineers.
Experience partnering closely with Product and Program Management to balance delivery, scope, and technical health.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience migrating systems off mainframe or other legacy platforms.
Familiarity with Domain-Driven Design at scale and cloud-native architectures.
Experience working in large, global organisations with multi-market or regulated environments.
Background in financial services or other high-reliability domains.
Why This Role Is Interesting
Meaningful platform impact: Lead teams delivering a core financial platform supporting multiple global markets.
Clear Director-level scope: Hands-on accountability for people, delivery, and engineering standards.
Principles-led leadership: Opportunity to apply DDD, Lean, and Agile practices where they genuinely shape outcomes.
Complex, real-world problems: Long-running platform modernisation with real constraints, dependencies, and trade-offs.
Strong cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with Product, Program Management, and Architecture to deliver outcomes—not just output.