Head of Engineering

About the Position

Matrix Eastern Europe, the offshore division of Matrix IT, one of the leading global R&D services companies with more than 11,000 professionals, is looking for a Head of Engineering to join one of our teams.

Our partner and client is a software vendor providing development, integration, and technical products for developers and technical professionals. Their solutions serve the SMB and enterprise market worldwide, with customers - some of whom have been with us for over two decades - who rely on our products as core infrastructure.

They are at an inflection point: modernizing our platform toward cloud-native, Kubernetes-based, AI-enabled delivery while continuing to support and evolve a mature product portfolio that our customers depend on daily.

Responsibilities

• End-to-End Delivery: Own end-to-end delivery of software releases across all sites: planning, execution, quality, and on-time shipment.
• Cross-Site Coordination: Manage cross-site coordination between India and Russia: communication rhythms, dependency management, and timezone-aware processes.
• Development Methodologies: Establish and refine development methodologies (Agile, Scrum, Kanban) across all teams.
• Predictable Delivery: Drive predictable delivery through capacity planning, velocity tracking, and risk management.
• Release Management: Own release management including go/no-go decisions, rollback procedures, and post-release monitoring.
• Engineering KPIs: Establish and track engineering KPIs: velocity, cycle time, defect escape rate, deployment frequency.

People Leadership & Team Building

• Lead and manage ~80 engineers, QA, and support professionals across geographies.
• Define team structure, squad composition, and reporting lines.
• Own the full hiring lifecycle: headcount planning, recruiting, interviewing, onboarding.
• Drive performance management, career development, and retention - particularly in competitive markets like India.
• Build a strong engineering culture that works across geographies, cultures, and time zones.
• Mentor team leads and senior engineers; develop the next generation of technical leaders.

Engineering Excellence & Quality

• Enforce coding standards, code-review practices, and quality gates across legacy and modern codebases.
• Own QA strategy: test automation, coverage targets, regression management for both legacy and new code.
• Drive CI/CD maturity: build pipelines, automated testing, deployment automation.
• Manage technical debt strategically: track, prioritize, and allocate remediation capacity.
• Ensure production stability: on-call rotations, SLA adherence, incident post-mortems.

Legacy Sustainment & Modernization Execution

• Translate the CTO’s modernization roadmap into phased implementation plans with realistic timelines.
• Lead execution of cloud migration, Kubernetes adoption, and SaaS enablement.
• Manage the legacy codebase: maintenance, security patches, customer-specific requirements, and upgrade paths.
• Ensure legacy and on-premise customers continue to receive quality support and upgrades during modernization.
• Balance resource allocation between legacy maintenance and new development.

Agentic SDLC Adoption

• Lead the adoption of AI-driven development tools and agentic workflows across Engineering - executing the AI-development strategy the CTO office sets.
• Work with the CTO to plan the transition from traditional team structures to smaller, senior-heavy squads.
• Drive engineering upskilling to prepare the team for AI-augmented development practices.
• Measure and iterate on productivity gains from agentic tooling as the team evolves toward a higher-output model.
• Manage the organizational change that comes with evolving team size and structure.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Maintain strong working relationships with Product Management, Sales, Pre-Sales, Support, and Professional Services.
• Participate in roadmap discussions to provide an engineering perspective on feasibility, effort, and delivery timelines.
• Ensure Engineering has the business context needed to prioritize effectively and deliver against commitments.
• Own the Engineering operational budget: headcount, tools, infrastructure, and training.

Requirements

• 10+ years of engineering leadership experience, with at least 5 years managing teams of 50+ people.
• Proven track record managing distributed/offshore engineering teams, ideally including India.
• Deep experience with legacy modernization - not just greenfield/startup environments.
• Previous experience in Java development.
• Good understanding of React, Node.js, Cloud.
• Hands-on understanding of cloud infrastructure, DevOps, CI/CD, Kubernetes, and modern SaaS delivery.
• Strong people-management skills: hiring, performance management, retention, culture-building across geographies.
• Background in a software vendor / product company (not only internal IT or consulting).
• Ability to engage with business stakeholders (Product, Sales, Support) so engineering decisions are well-informed.
• An execution-and-delivery mindset - comfortable owning the “how and when” while the CTO office owns the “what and why.”
• Comfortable with ambiguity and long transformation timelines.

Advantages

• Experience in developer tools, integration platforms, or infrastructure software.
• Track record of taking a team through a cloud/SaaS transformation.
• Familiarity with SMB and enterprise software sales cycles.
• Experience managing support functions alongside development.
• Openness to AI-driven development practices and agentic workflows.

We Offer

• Additional 20 days of paid leave.
• Professional and career benefits.
• Top-quality work environment.
• Online courses.
• Online sports activities.
• Team Buildings and Christmas Parties.

About the Company

Matrix Eastern Europe is the offshore division of Matrix IT, one of the leading global R&D services companies with more than 11,000 professionals.