Director, Engineering, AI Search
Primary stack
Job description
About the Position
Director, Engineering, AI Search
London, England
About the Team
Algolia’s Engineering team builds the core infrastructure and product features that power real-time search and discovery for thousands of customers around the world. This includes backend services, frontend components, site reliability, and ML-powered capabilities. The team is distributed, collaborative, and committed to technical excellence and continuous learning.
Responsibilities
As an Engineering Director, you will lead multiple teams or a critical product area, working closely with Engineering Managers, Product, and Design to deliver scalable, reliable, and high-impact solutions. Your role will consist of:
- Leading a group of engineering teams (via Engineering Managers and Senior ICs), ensuring alignment with product and company priorities
- Demonstrating strong AI leadership within the engineering organization by fostering a culture of continuous improvement and proactively evaluating and applying emerging AI technologies to enhance productivity, efficiency, and organizational performance across the broader technology function.
- Owning delivery, execution, and operational excellence for a defined product or platform area
- Partnering closely with Product, Design, and cross-functional stakeholders to shape roadmaps and ensure successful delivery of customer value
- Driving engineering best practices across system design, scalability, reliability, and performance
- Being a member of Algolia’s senior technology leadership team, with significant contributions to engineering excellence and the high performance of the global technology organization, extending beyond the immediate area of responsibility.
- Supporting and coaching Engineering Managers, helping them grow as leaders and build high-performing teams
- Contributing to organizational planning, including headcount, team structure, and quarterly/annual planning cycles
- Ensuring a strong culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement within your organization
- Acting as a bridge between strategy and execution, translating high-level goals into clear team-level priorities
- Serving as a trusted advisor to the CTO and SVP Engineering, providing strategic guidance on engineering leadership, organizational effectiveness, and cross-functional management initiatives across the technology organization.
Requirements
- 8–12+ years of engineering experience, including 3–5+ years managing multiple teams or managing through managers
- Proven experience delivering complex, cross-functional projects in a fast-paced, high-growth environment
- Strong technical background with experience in distributed systems, APIs, and scalable infrastructure
- Demonstrated ability to lead through others, empowering managers and senior engineers
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to align diverse stakeholders and drive clarity
- Experience operating in distributed or global engineering environments
Nice to Have
- Experience in developer tools, infrastructure, or data platforms
- Familiarity with product-led growth (PLG) environments
- Exposure to AI/ML-powered products or platforms
We Offer
- Base Salary Pay Range: £160,000 - £200,000 GBP
- FLEXIBLE WORKPLACE STRATEGY: Algolia’s flexible workplace model is designed to empower all Algolians to fulfill our mission to power search and discovery with ease. We place an emphasis on an individual’s impact, contribution, and output, over their physical location. Algolia is a high-trust environment and many of our team members have the autonomy to choose where they want to work and when.
About the Company
Algolia does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, military status, veteran status, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.
We’re looking for talented, passionate people to help build the world’s best search and discovery technology. We value autonomy, diversity, and collaboration. We’re committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone is respected and supported-regardless of race, age, ancestry, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, color, veteran status, disability, or socioeconomic background.
Important Notice for Candidates - Recruitment Fraud Notice
We’ve recently seen an increase in recruitment scams targeting job seekers. To help protect yourself, please keep the following in mind:
- Our open positions may appear on third-party job boards, but the best way to apply safely is directly through our careers page.
- All genuine communication from Algolia will come from an @algolia.com email address. If you receive an email from someone claiming to work at Algolia who does not have an @algolia.com email address, please do not respond or share any personal information.
- We’ll never ask for payments, purchases, or financial details during the hiring process.
Ready to Apply?
If you share our values and our enthusiasm for building the world’s best search & discovery technology, we’d love to review your application!
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