The Job in short

As an Engineering Director at Backbase, you will lead a multi-project engineering organization delivering complex digital banking solutions for leading financial institutions in the Middle East region. You are accountable for building a high-performing engineering organization that consistently delivers predictable, high-quality software while developing future engineering leaders.

This is not only a delivery leadership role. You are expected to continuously improve how engineering operates by introducing modern engineering practices, scaling engineering excellence across teams and driving AI-assisted software development.

You will lead Engineering Managers and Technical Leaders across multiple customer engagements, balancing customer success, engineering quality and organizational growth.

Meet the Job

• Lead and grow an engineering organization of 100+ engineers across multiple customer programs.
• Coach, develop and raise the bar for Engineering Managers through regular mentoring, feedback and performance management.
• Drive engineering excellence by improving delivery predictability, quality, developer experience, operational readiness and engineering metrics.
• Establish consistent engineering governance, release readiness, architecture and quality practices across multiple teams.
• Partner with customers, Delivery Managers, Technical Leaders, Architects and Product leadership to build trusted engineering relationships and resolve complex delivery challenges.
• Build a culture of ownership, accountability, continuous improvement and technical excellence.
• Lead engineering transformation through adoption of AI-native development practices, Agentic SDLC, automation and modern platform capabilities.
• Develop engineering capability for the region through hiring, succession planning, technical communities and career development.

What success looks like

You build an organization where:

• Engineering Managers grow into exceptional leaders.
• Teams deliver predictably with a balance of quality.
• Engineering decisions are driven by data.
• Customers trust engineering commitments.
• AI measurably improves engineering productivity and quality.
• Engineering standards scale consistently across projects and teams.
• Difficult organizational changes are implemented when required to improve long-term outcomes.

How about you

• Proven experience leading multiple engineering teams (50+ engineers) through Engineering Managers.
• Experience operating large-scale software delivery organizations across multiple concurrent projects.
• Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices including architecture governance, CI/CD, testing strategies, observability, operational excellence and engineering metrics.
• Demonstrated success building and coaching engineering leaders
• Experience leading organizational transformation and driving measurable engineering improvements.
• Strong customer-facing leadership with the ability to build trust while navigating difficult delivery situations.
• Hands-on understanding of AI-assisted software engineering, developer tooling and Agentic SDLC with the ability to pragmatically introduce these practices across engineering organizations.
• Excellent communication skills with both executive stakeholders and engineering teams.
• Bias for ownership, continuous improvement and data-driven decision making.

Leadership principles

Engineering Directors at Backbase:

• Build leaders.
• Measure outcomes, not activity.
• Solve systemic problems rather than local optimizations.
• Raise engineering quality without slowing delivery.
• Challenge the status quo and continuously improve how engineering works.
• Embrace AI as an engineering multiplier while maintaining strong engineering fundamentals.