Director, Software Engineering

Job Description

Director of Engineering

Join us at Zendesk where were on a mission to power exceptional service for every person on the planet. Were accelerating that ambition by building products rooted in AI automation and intelligent customer experiences because behind every interaction lies an opportunity to make a human connection.

Zendesk is establishing a world-class Research & Development centre in Pune to scale our engineering capabilities and accelerate delivery of AI-enabled customer service solutions. Were hiring a seasoned Director of Engineering to lead and scale a mature engineering organization in Pune delivering reliable execution strong technical leadership and cross-functional alignment that enables product outcomes at scale.

Summary

You will have autonomy and a clear mandate to create predictable delivery technical excellence and cross-functional alignment across multiple engineering teams. This role requires strategic vision operational discipline exceptional partnership skills and a talent for developing managers and technical leaders. You will be accountable for delivery risk org design and for scaling an engineering organization that builds secure reliable and delightful AI-augmented products.

What youll be doing

• Champion an AI-First Mindset: Guide teams to thoughtfully integrate AI into product features and internal workflows to drive best-in-class efficiency and innovation ensuring usage is purposeful rather than reactive.

• Cultivate Product Ownership: Shift team culture from ticket-taking to deep product ownership where engineers understand the why behind the code and take accountability for user outcomes.

• Operate as a Multiplier: Focus intensely on coaching and mentoring managers and engineers to elevate their performance effectively scaling your impact through the growth of others.

• Lead through Ambiguity: Take high-level ambiguous business goals and convert them into clear executable plans providing stability for the team while navigating shifting priorities.

• Roll up your sleeves Leadership: Maintain a strong technical pulse; while you are a business-tech leader you are willing and able to chip in on technical architecture or critical blockers when the situation demands.

• Define communicate and reinforce the purpose and vision for your teams so they are empowered to execute against business priorities.

• Partner with Product Management and Group Tech Leads to create and maintain a shared product and technical roadmap balancing business value risk mitigation and technical debt.

• Own delivery risk for your teams products: capacity planning incident response technical debt strategy compliance and disaster recovery readiness.

• Build Global Partnership & Cross-functional Alignment: Build and maintain strong relationships with global partners (Security HR/People Product Design) and internal engineering stakeholders across time zones and cultures to ensure alignment and coordinated execution.

• Make delegated budget resourcing and compensation decisions; ensure capacity across delivery testing and operations.

• Communicate progress risks and emerging issues frequently and transparently to stakeholders across the business.

• Participate in long-range planning and contribute proposals for organization design and resourcing that align engineering outcomes with company strategy.

• Participate in the engineering leadership on-call rotation.

What you bring to the role

• Builder Mindset: You are a creator at heart who remains close to the technology. You possess the technical depth to earn the respect of principal engineers while remaining focused on business strategy.

• Versatility and Business Impact: You thrive in fluid environments and are comfortable wearing multiple hats. You prioritize making an impact where the business needs it most over maintaining a rigid organizational structure.

• Focus on Disambiguation: A track record of entering complex undefined situations and creating the clarity influence and alignment necessary to move the organization forward.

• Thoughtful AI Adoption: Proven experience in leveraging AI tools to improve organizational productivity and product quality with a focus on ethical and strategic implementation.

• Proven ability to lead and scale engineering organisations including direct oversight of multiple Engineering Managers and Senior Managers.

• Demonstrated success delivering complex large-scale products while balancing speed quality and long-term maintainability.

• Strong collaborator with a track record of partnering effectively with Product and technical leadership to align roadmaps priorities and trade-offs.

• Exceptional communicator and influencer who builds trust across technical and non-technical stakeholders and clearly articulates risks and trade-offs.

• Comfortable making timely well-reasoned decisions in ambiguous and complex situations and communicating those decisions transparently.

• Advocate for sustainable engineering practices that support innovation while ensuring reliability scalability and maintainability.

• Empathetic development-focused leader who mentors managers and engineers and fosters psychologically safe high-performing teams.

• Experience owning delegated budgets hiring plans and compensation recommendations to ensure the organisation has the right capacity and skills.

Basic qualifications

• Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science Engineering or equivalent practical experience.

• 12 years of software engineering experience with at least 7 years in leadership roles and 3 years at a senior management or director level overseeing multiple teams.

• Proven experience leading cloud-native SaaS engineering organizations and managing delivery across distributed teams.

• Demonstrated experience with hiring performance management org design and budget/resource planning.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience building or shipping AI-enabled or data-driven products and integrating ML workflows into production systems.

• Strong background in large-scale distributed systems reliability engineering and performance optimization.

• Experience at a high-growth SaaS company or in environments with fast release cycles and rapid organisational change.

• Familiarity with modern stacks and platforms common at Zendesk (e.g. (Javascript Typescript React Ember Java Ruby on Rails Kubernetes GCP/AWS) is a plus.

• Prior experience operating in multi-site or cross-cultural engineering organizations.

Location

Pune India hybrid working model aligned with Zendesks local workplace policies.

Please note that Zendesk can only hire candidates who are physically located and plan to work from Karnataka or Maharashtra. Please refer to the location posted on the requisition for where this role is based.

Hybrid: In this role our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection collaboration learning and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working enables us to purposefully come together in person at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world to connect collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer and were proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity equity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race color religion national origin age sex gender gender identity gender expression sexual orientation marital status medical condition ancestry disability military or veteran status or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application complete any pre-employment testing or otherwise participate in the employee selection process please send an e-mail to with your specific accommodation request.