Director of Software Engineering

About the Role:

Smart Food Safe, a global Quality and Food Safety Management SaaS company, is looking for a Director of Software Engineering with a proven track record of building and scaling SaaS products in startup or high-growth environments .

We are looking for a hands-on technology leader and product builder , not simply a people manager. The ideal candidate combines strong SaaS architecture, engineering leadership, product delivery, cloud, security, and team-building experience. Experience building or integrating AI into SaaS products is a strong advantage.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and execute the technical vision, architecture, and engineering roadmap aligned with business and product strategy.
• Lead the end-to-end SDLC , including Agile execution, development, QA, CI/CD, release management, and production operations.
• Design and evolve a scalable, secure, high-performance, multi-tenant SaaS platform .
• Drive rapid and predictable product delivery while balancing speed, quality, technical debt, scalability, and security.
• Lead architecture across APIs, databases, integrations, cloud infrastructure, performance, and distributed systems.
• Recruit, mentor, and retain high-performing engineers and build a culture of ownership, innovation, accountability, and engineering excellence .
• Establish engineering KPIs covering delivery, quality, reliability, performance, and productivity.
• Ensure compliance with ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR , security, privacy, and enterprise customer requirements.
• Manage engineering budgets, cloud costs, technology vendors, and third-party services.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and drive their practical adoption across the product.

AI Leadership - Strong Advanatage

Work closely with AI engineers to integrate LLMs, RAG, AI agents, Intelligent Document Processing, predictive analytics, and AI-powered workflows into the core SaaS platform.

Experience building or scaling AI-enabled SaaS products in production is highly preferred.

Required Experience:

• Proven experience building and scaling commercial SaaS products in startup/scale-up environments .
• Strong software engineering background with progressive engineering leadership experience.
• Experience leading engineering teams and delivering complex products from concept to production.
• Strong knowledge of SaaS architecture, multi-tenancy, APIs, SQL/NoSQL databases, integrations, distributed systems, and cloud architecture .
• Strong AWS and/or Azure experience.
• Experience with Agile, CI/CD, automated testing, DevOps, observability, and production operations.
• Strong understanding of application security, data privacy, scalability, reliability, and enterprise SaaS compliance.
• Proven ability to recruit, mentor, and develop high-performing engineering teams.
• Strong product and customer mindset with the ability to balance speed, quality, scalability, and cost .

Proved Track Record - Required

We are looking for a builder, not simply a manager .

Candidates should be prepared to demonstrate:

SaaS product built → Personal contribution → Team built/led → Architecture → Scale achieved → Technical challenges solved → Delivery improvements → Business impact

Prior experience as a Director/Head of Engineering, Engineering Manager, Technical Lead, Principal Engineer, or similar leadership role is preferred.

Startup/scale-up SaaS product-building experience is highly preferred, and proven AI product experience is a significant advantage.

We are looking for a hands-on technology leader who can scale both our SaaS platform and engineering organization while helping us build the next generation of AI-enabled Quality & Food Safety software.