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.

Work arrangement
No