R&D Group Manager (Director)

We are seeking a dynamic and visionary leader to join our team as the Director of Research and Development.

In this role, you will be responsible for overseeing and driving innovation across 5–6 teams, each comprising developers, architects, and automation QA experts. Reporting directly to our VP of R&D, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our products and owning the full development life cycle from conception to production.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership:

• Develop and execute a forward-thinking R&D strategy aligned with the company's overall business objectives.
• Provide visionary leadership to multiple teams, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Software Architecture:

• Drive architecture principles, technology selection, engineering practices and stack modernization
• Lead and enforce engineering practices across groups

Team Management:

• Lead and mentor 5-6 cross-functional teams, ensuring they are motivated, engaged, and working cohesively towards common goals.
• Promote a culture of accountability, ownership, and excellence within each team.

Product Development:

• Oversee the end-to-end product development life cycle for multiple cross non foundation domains.
• Collaborate with product managers, architects, and other stakeholders to ensure successful delivery of high-quality products.

Quality Assurance:

• Drive a robust quality assurance process, while implement effective and modern testing strategies and ensure product reliability.
• Champion a culture of quality across the R&D organization, emphasizing the importance of innovation, quality and agility in every phase of development.

Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Foster strong collaboration between R&D teams and other departments, such as product management, operations, and customer support.
• Ensure seamless communication and alignment of goals to drive successful outcomes.

• Minimum of 3 years of experience in a similar leadership role within a high-scale SaaS development environment.
• Proven experience in a leadership role within R&D, managing cross-functional teams, with a focus on developing and supporting high-scale SaaS (Software as a Service) products.
• Proven experience in driving stack modernization projects.
• Extensive background in software development and a deep understanding of the full development life cycle, particularly in the context of large-scale, mission-critical SaaS applications.
• Strong technical background, experienced in cloud native, mico-services based SaaS products. Hands on is advantage.
• Passionate about leveraging AI within the development life cycle for boosting productivity and quality.
• Demonstrated expertise in implementing and optimizing QA processes, with a focus on automation, in the context of high-scale SaaS products.
• Hands-on experience in developing and maintaining production environments for SaaS products, ensuring reliability, scalability, and optimal performance.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and inspire teams in the context of high-scale SaaS development.
• Strategic thinking and the ability to align R&D efforts with broader business objectives, especially in the dynamic landscape of SaaS.
• A track record of successful product delivery and innovation in the SaaS space, with a keen understanding of the challenges and opportunities unique to this environment.
• Good understanding of system performance and load/stress tests
• Good understanding of monitoring and ownership of production related issues.
• Experience managing on site and remote teams.