Director of Engineering - Studio Team

The Five9 Studio engineering team drive the realization of practical AI solutions for the contact centre environment. Our existing Studio product stack is built on Laravel Framework-PHP, Python and Vue.js technology deployed in private and public clouds. We leverage the latest cloud AI services such as OpenAI, Google Speech and Dialogflow, Deepgram, IBM Watson and Wellsaid and integrate into Five9 wider well-developed microservices platform. 

Our vision for practical AI involves equipping contact centre agents, supervisors and managers with user interfaces that guide and summarize their work, identify points of coaching and support, and fully automate routine interactions. This latter part is the focus of the Studio Engineering team, enabling our customers to create and tune implementation of AI agents into their voice and digital channels for their end-customer self-service and steering to best agent. 

Role purpose 

The purpose of this role is to build and lead a team of developers and quality assurance that will design, develop, and maintain software solutions and drive the implementation of best practices in continuous integration, continuous delivery and service ownership within a fast-paced environment.  

This role requires a hands-on approach and while it spends some time undertaking development, it will ultimately contribute to delivering exceptional customer experience. 

How you contribute 

• Lead and mentor a team of software development engineers responsible for designing, implementing, monitoring and tooling our cloud services. 

• Identify and hire suitable employees in partnership with the Talent Acquisition team. 

• Provide coaching, feedback, and development opportunities to enhance skills, motivation, and performance of team members. 

• Oversee the design, development, and implementation of features and functionality aligning with the feature goals. Ensure adherence to best practices, standards, and security protocols. 

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product managers, designers, and quality assurance professionals, to ensure that everyone is aligned around goals and progress. 

• Drive the adoption of modern technologies, tools and practices to streamline development workflows, improve efficiency, and enhance the quality and reliability of our software. 

• Apply strong understanding of various programming languages, frameworks, and development methodologies, to enable informed decisions and solve complex technical challenges. 

• Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical issues by applying problem-solving skills to identify the root causes and implement effective solutions. 

• Manage relationships with cloud service providers, tool vendors, and other external partners. 

• Drive a culture of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous learning within the team and across the organization. 

• Apply a can do “attitude” and finds solutions for complex distributed problems. 

• Take part in roadmap planning and manage execution process 

• Collaborate with leadership on long-term vision, and strategy  

Skills, competencies and qualifications  

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 5 years in a leadership role.  

• A portfolio of past projects showcasing backend and full stack development skills, preferably on a cloud based platforms (GCP, AWS or Azure).  

• Proficiency and strong experience in one or more backend languages / technologies as PHP, Python, Java, and familiarity with frontend Javascript frameworks such as REACT and or Vue.JS 

• In-depth understanding of microservices architecture, RESTful APIs, and distributed systems. Telephony and SIP desirable.  

• Experience with QA automation, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps best practices, preferably hands-on experience developing services in a containerization environment 

• Awareness of security best practices and the ability to implement security measures to protect applications and data. 

• Demonstrates critical thinking with sound analytical, debugging skills 

• Strong commitment to delivering high-quality code and solutions on time and within scope. 

• Strong communicator who can express thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively. 

• Demonstrated experience building strong cross functional team relationships. 

• Demonstrated ability to hire and onboard developers at rapid rate. 

• Experience in developing and/or assessing processes and procedures and drive meaningful improvements. 

• Demonstrated ability to work independently and collaboratively with multiple teams across various time zones. 

• Prior experience managing remote and distributed staff.  

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in relevant discipline.  

Other requirements 

• This position requires the ability to be On Call. 

Key relationships 

Manages a team of up to 15 – 25 Engineers and Managers 

Key stakeholders include: 

• Product Managers 

• Product Architects 

• Quality Assurance Team 

• Cloud Platform team