Director of Engineering

About the client Our client is a global SaaS leader in field service management (FSM), helping trades and field service businesses around the world manage jobs, people and profitability. Its software is trusted by thousands of businesses globally, built by an established engineering organization in Australia. The company is now investing in a new engineering hub in Medellín and is looking for a Director of Engineering to build and lead it.

About the role
This is a hands-on leadership role focused on expanding the capabilities of the platform, with AI as a core lever to accelerate delivery and improve team velocity. You will hire and build the Medellín engineering team and shape how it uses AI-native development practices to ship faster and more reliably. You'll work in close partnership with the engineering organization in Australia, taking on new product capabilities, accelerating roadmap delivery and operating as a high-velocity engineering team within the global organization.

What you'll do
- Build the org: recruit, interview and hire the engineers, tech leads and future managers of the Medellín team.
- Accelerate delivery with AI: champion AI-first, AI-native development practices and tooling to increase speed, improve code quality and lift team velocity.
- Build an in-office culture that drives collaboration, learning and innovation.
- Set the foundation: establish engineering practices, tooling, coding standards and delivery rhythms suited to a distributed, multi-region product organization.
- Partner across time zones: build a strong working relationship with engineering leadership in Australia on architecture, roadmap and ways of working, so Medellín integrates seamlessly rather than operating as a silo.
- Own delivery: take accountability for the Colombia team's contributions to the product roadmap, balancing speed with the quality bar of an established platform.
- Represent Colombia in the global org: be the voice of the Medellín team in leadership discussions and planning cycles.
- Scale responsibly: design an org structure (squads, leads, career paths) that can grow while sustaining high velocity. What success looks like in your first year
- The founding engineering team in Medellín hired and onboarded.
- A working cadence and trusted partnership with the Australia engineering organization.
- AI-first development practices in place that measurably improve delivery speed.
- An in-office culture that fosters collaboration, learning and innovation.
- Meaningful contributions shipped to the product roadmap from the Colombia team.
- The beginnings of a scalable engineering org structure ready for future growth. Requirements Required
- Proven experience leading software engineering teams, ideally including building or scaling a new team, office or function.
- Strong hands-on technical background in full-stack, cloud-native SaaS, with the credibility to hire and evaluate senior engineers.
- Experience building and maintaining highly available, scalable cloud/SaaS solutions on AWS.
- A track record of hiring: sourcing, interviewing and building strong engineering teams.
- Demonstrated use of AI-first or AI-native development practices and tools to improve delivery speed and team velocity.
- Experience working in a distributed, global engineering model across time zones and cultures.
- Experience building strong in-person team cultures, and a belief in the value of in-person collaboration.
- Comfort operating with ambiguity and building structure where none exists yet.
- Fluent written and spoken English, for regular collaboration with global leadership.
- Strong executive presence to represent the Medellín team in front of senior leadership and influence decisions across the global engineering organization. Nice to have
- Experience working with Australia / APAC teams.
- Experience in field service management, vertical SaaS or B2B software. Benefits
- Permanent contract (contrato a término indefinido) with all legal benefits
- Competitive salary
- Private health insurance (medicina prepagada)
- Relocation bonus to Medellín
- On-site role in Medellín, 5 days a week, with parking
- The chance to build and lead a new engineering hub from day one