Senior Director of Engineering (Ecommerce)

We are looking for a Senior Director of Engineering - Ecommerce to lead the engineering organization responsible for a high-scale, channel-agnostic Commerce Platform powering end-to-end commerce journeys across mobile, web, shops, call centers, and emerging commerce channels. This is a core consumer commerce platform where everything that gets sold flows through the platform. The role will own and influence critical customer journeys spanning product discovery, catalog/category browsing, cart, checkout, order placement, conversion, and the overall commerce experience. The ideal leader will bring deep experience building and scaling B2C ecommerce, marketplaces, consumer internet, super-apps, or high-scale consumer platforms, combined with strong technical architecture and engineering leadership capabilities.
The core responsibilities for the job include the following:
Engineering and Platform Leadership:
Lead and scale a globally distributed engineering organization of approximately 100-150 engineers across India, Germany, and Greece.
Set the technical vision, engineering strategy, architecture roadmap, and execution standards for the Commerce Platform.
Build highly scalable, reliable, secure, and resilient commerce systems supporting multiple channels.
Drive engineering excellence across architecture, system design, coding practices, testing, observability, reliability, and operational maturity.
Lead large-scale modernization and transformation initiatives across the commerce ecosystem.
Commerce Product and Customer Journey Ownership:
Own the technology powering the complete consumer commerce lifecycle.
Drive engineering strategy across product discovery, search and browse experiences, product catalog, category pages, cart, checkout, order placement, Conversion funnel, Customer experience.
Partner closely with product, business, UX, data, and other technology leaders to improve customer journeys and business outcomes.
Understand and optimize the journey from the user landing on discovery/category, evaluating products, adding to cart, checking out, and placing an order.
Translate customer and business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
Architecture and Technical Strategy:
Own architecture for highly distributed, high-volume commerce systems.
Design systems capable of handling significant traffic, transaction volumes, availability requirements, and peak commerce events.
Drive architectural decisions across microservices, APIs, distributed systems, data platforms, integrations, and event-driven architectures.
Ensure systems are designed for scalability, performance, resiliency, observability, and fault tolerance.
Review and challenge complex technical designs while maintaining a strong hands-on understanding of engineering fundamentals.
People and Organizational Leadership:
Build and develop a high-performing engineering leadership organization.
Coach and mentor directors, senior engineering managers, and senior technical leaders.
Establish a culture of ownership, accountability, engineering excellence, and customer obsession.
Drive effective collaboration across globally distributed teams and multiple geographies.
Attract, retain, and develop top engineering talent.
Cross-Functional Leadership:
Work closely with product, commercial, UX, data, operations, and senior business stakeholders.
Influence product strategy through strong understanding of technology, customer behavior, and commerce economics.
Balance short-term business priorities with long-term platform scalability and technical sustainability.
Communicate complex technical concepts and architectural trade-offs effectively to executive stakeholders.
Requirements:
15-20 years of overall software engineering experience with significant senior engineering leadership experience.
Strong experience leading large engineering organizations, ideally 100+ engineers.
Deep experience building consumer-facing B2C commerce platforms.
Strong understanding of e-commerce and consumer journeys, including discovery, product catalog, category/browse, cart, checkout, order placement, and conversion optimization.
Experience owning platforms where commerce is the core business, rather than a supporting capability.
Strong expertise in distributed systems, scalable architecture, system design, APIs, microservices, and cloud-native engineering.
Proven experience taking complex platforms to high scale, availability, and reliability.
Strong product-engineering mindset with the ability to connect technical decisions to customer experience and business conversion.
Experience working with globally distributed engineering teams.
Preferred Background:
Candidates from the following environments would be highly relevant: Large-scale e-commerce, consumer internet, marketplaces, super apps, consumer technology platforms, App-based consumer businesses, High-scale B2C/D2C products
Candidates currently working in B2B technology companies can also be considered if they have substantial earlier experience building strong B2C/ecommerce consumer platforms.
Candidates whose entire career has been focused on B2B enterprise products without meaningful ownership of consumer commerce journeys would not be preferred.
AI Expectations:
AI/GenAI experience is not mandatory for this role.
Strong engineering fundamentals.
Deep architecture and system-design capabilities.
Scalable commerce platform experience.
Consumer product thinking.
Technical leadership.
Engineering organization leadership.
Awareness of AI/GenAI and its potential applications within commerce is a plus, but this is not an AI-first engineering leadership role.
Ideal Candidate Profile:
Has built and scaled high-volume B2C commerce platforms.
Understands e-commerce beyond backend services and individual technical components.
Has ownership of complete customer journeys rather than isolated engineering functions.
Can go deep into architecture and distributed systems.
Understands the relationship between technology, customer experience, and conversion.
Has successfully led large, geographically distributed engineering organizations.
Can operate effectively at both strategic and technical levels.
Is comfortable influencing product and business leadership while maintaining strong technical credibility.
Core Keywords: Ecommerce B2C, Consumer Internet, Marketplace, Commerce Platform, Product Discovery, Catalog, Cart, Checkout, Order Management, Conversion, Distributed Systems, System Design, Cloud, Microservices, Engineering Leadership, Global Teams.

Experience
16-20 yrs