Job Description

About the Role

We are seeking a Sr. Director, Engineering to lead AI-first transformation across customer-facing SaaS product engineering capabilities. This leader will shape technical direction, drive engineering excellence, and deliver scalable, reliable, and high-impact product outcomes in a highly matrixed, globally distributed environment.

This is a people leadership role that requires deep software engineering roots. The successful candidate will be credible with senior engineers and architects, comfortable engaging in critical system design and architecture decisions, and able to translate complex technical direction into clear product, customer, and business outcomes.

The role is accountable for engineering delivery outcomes and technical direction while operating through senior engineering leaders, technical leaders, architects, and cross-functional partners. The ideal candidate is a constructive challenger who can question legacy assumptions, elevate engineering standards, and guide mature SaaS capabilities toward an AI-first future.

Key Responsibilities

AI-First Product and Engineering Transformation

Lead the evolution of customer-facing SaaS product engineering capabilities from a mature SaaS model toward an AI-first product and engineering model.
Drive AI-enabled product innovation that improves customer workflows, decision support, automation, insight generation, and product differentiation.
Apply practical understanding of GenAI tools and AI-assisted engineering practices to improve SDLC effectiveness, developer productivity, software quality, testing, documentation, and modernization efforts.
Partner with product, architecture, security, privacy, data governance, and responsible AI stakeholders so AI-enabled capabilities are implemented thoughtfully within enterprise standards.

Engineering Strategy, Architecture, and System Design

Define and communicate technical direction for customer-facing SaaS product engineering capabilities in alignment with product strategy, business priorities, and long-term platform evolution.
Provide deep technical leadership in architecture reviews, system design discussions, and critical engineering tradeoff decisions.
Guide the design and modernization of large-scale distributed systems, cloud-native services, APIs, data-intensive product platforms, and integrated user experiences.
Challenge existing technical approaches and identify opportunities to improve scalability, reliability, performance, security, maintainability, cost efficiency, and customer value.
Raise the engineering bar around system design, design discipline, architectural decision-making, and long-term technical sustainability.

SaaS Product Engineering Delivery

Drive engineering delivery outcomes across complex, customer-facing SaaS product capabilities while ensuring alignment across Product, Architecture, Engineering, and Business stakeholders.
Translate product and business goals into executable engineering direction, prioritization, and delivery plans through senior engineering leaders and technical leaders.
Balance new AI-first capability development with modernization of mature enterprise SaaS systems, technical debt reduction, and continuity of existing customer commitments.
Improve measurable engineering outcomes, including delivery predictability, release quality, engineering productivity, modernization progress, and customer-impacting delivery velocity.
Contribute to planning, prioritization, resource allocation, and engineering investment tradeoff decisions in partnership with cross-functional stakeholders.

Production Excellence and Engineering Operations

Ensure customer-facing SaaS capabilities are designed, delivered, and operated with strong standards for reliability, availability, scalability, performance, security, and quality.
Strengthen engineering practices across CI/CD, test automation, observability, operational readiness, incident learning, and continuous improvement.
Promote a production-first mindset that treats operability, supportability, resiliency, and cost efficiency as core design considerations.
Use engineering metrics and operational signals to identify systemic issues, improve team effectiveness, and guide technical and organizational improvements.

Leadership, Talent, and Matrixed Influence

Lead through direct leadership accountability, senior technical credibility, and matrixed influence across Engineering, Product, Architecture, Business, and enabling functions.
Develop and mentor Directors, Senior Managers, Principal Engineers, and senior technical talent, building leadership capacity and raising the technical bar across teams.
Create a culture of ownership, accountability, constructive challenge, customer focus, innovation, and continuous learning.
Align globally distributed teams across time zones, cultures, and organizational boundaries.
Communicate clearly with executive, technical, and non-technical audiences, translating complex engineering topics into business-relevant decisions and outcomes.

Qualifications

Experience

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
15+ years of progressive technology and software engineering leadership experience.
Proven experience leading and developing senior engineering leaders and technical leaders, including Directors, Senior Managers, Principal Engineers, or equivalent roles.
Demonstrated success leading engineering for customer-facing enterprise SaaS products, data-intensive platforms, analytics products, or comparable large-scale commercial software platforms.
Experience driving engineering transformation across mature SaaS environments, including modernization, technical debt reduction, quality improvement, and delivery acceleration.
Current experience leading AI-enabled product capability development within enterprise SaaS or comparable commercial software environments.
Experience applying GenAI tools and AI-assisted practices within engineering workflows to improve software delivery, quality, developer productivity, or modernization outcomes.
Experience leading globally distributed engineering teams in a matrixed organization.

Technical Expertise

Deep software engineering background with strong system design, distributed systems, and architecture experience.
Strong understanding of cloud-native architecture, scalable platform design, data-intensive systems, API design, integration patterns, performance optimization, reliability engineering, and enterprise architecture principles.
Prior hands-on engineering experience and leadership familiarity with technologies used by modern SaaS teams, including Java, Python, Angular, Azure cloud services, and AI/GenAI technologies and frameworks.
Ability to evaluate architectural options, challenge design assumptions, and guide technical tradeoffs across speed, quality, scalability, cost, security, maintainability, and customer impact.
Strong understanding of modern software development practices, including Agile delivery, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, secure engineering practices, and production operations.

Leadership Capabilities

Transformative mindset with the ability to move teams from established SaaS operating models toward AI-first product and engineering approaches.
Ability to challenge the status quo constructively, challenge self and teams to improve, and bring others along through influence, clarity, and technical credibility.
Strong executive presence, stakeholder management, and communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences.
High accountability for engineering outcomes, customer impact, and business-aligned execution.
Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, make decisions with incomplete information, and create alignment across competing priorities.
Strong coaching and talent development skills, with a track record of building high-performing engineering leadership teams.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience leading AI-driven product transformation initiatives that created measurable customer value or commercial impact.
Experience with modern AI/GenAI application patterns, orchestration frameworks, model integration, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic workflows, or AI-enabled analytics experiences.
Experience in retail, CPG, consumer measurement, market intelligence, data analytics, or adjacent data-rich enterprise domains.
Background working in product-led technology organizations with close partnership across Product Management, Design, Architecture, Data Science, Security, and Business stakeholders.
Experience improving engineering operating models through metrics, platform thinking, engineering productivity practices, and production excellence.

What Success Looks Like

AI-enabled product capabilities are being delivered with clear customer value, measurable product impact, and strong engineering foundations.
GenAI-enabled engineering practices are adopted in practical, measurable ways that improve productivity, quality, modernization, and developer effectiveness.
Mature SaaS capabilities are modernized without compromising reliability, performance, security, customer commitments, or delivery predictability.
Architecture and system design decisions are clearer, better documented, and aligned with long-term platform and product direction.
Engineering leaders and senior technical talent are operating at a higher bar, with stronger ownership, accountability, and technical judgment.
Product, Architecture, Engineering, Business, and enabling stakeholders are aligned around priorities, investment tradeoffs, and delivery outcomes.
Customer-facing systems demonstrate measurable improvements in reliability, scalability, performance, quality, and speed of innovation.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a deeply technical engineering leader who has grown into a strategic product engineering executive. They have strong software engineering roots, deep system design judgment, and the credibility to engage senior engineers and architects on complex technical tradeoffs.

They have led enterprise SaaS product transformation, with particular strength in applying AI and GenAI to customer-facing product capabilities. They also understand how AI can improve engineering practices, but they treat AI adoption as a means to improve customer value, quality, speed, and differentiation rather than as a technology trend by itself.

They are a constructive challenger: intellectually curious, self-critical, comfortable questioning legacy approaches, and skilled at bringing people along in a highly matrixed environment. They combine technical depth, people leadership, product orientation, and execution discipline to create durable impact across distributed teams.

Additional Information

Our Benefits

Flexible working environment
Volunteer time off
LinkedIn Learning
Employee-Assistance-Program (EAP)

NIQ may utilize artificial intelligence (AI) tools at various stages of the recruitment process, including résumé screening, candidate assessments, interview scheduling, job matching, communication support, and certain administrative tasks that help streamline workflows. These tools are intended to improve efficiency and support fair and consistent evaluation based on job-related criteria. All use of AI is governed by NIQ’s principles of fairness, transparency, human oversight, and inclusion. Final hiring decisions are made exclusively by humans. NIQ regularly reviews its AI tools to help mitigate bias and ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations. If you have questions, require accommodations, or wish to request human review were permitted by law, please contact your local HR representative. For more information, please visit NIQ’s AI Safety Policies and Guiding Principles: https://nielseniq.com/global/en/info/niqs-ai-safety-policies/

About NIQ

NIQ is the world’s leading consumer intelligence company, delivering the most complete understanding of consumer buying behavior and revealing new pathways to growth. In 2023, NIQ combined with GfK, bringing together the two industry leaders with unparalleled global reach. With a holistic retail read and the most comprehensive consumer insights—delivered with advanced analytics through state-of-the-art platforms—NIQ delivers the Full View™. NIQ is an Advent International portfolio company with operations in 100+ markets, covering more than 90% of the world’s population.

For more information, visit NIQ.com

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Senior Director, Engineering | Retail Analytics / CPG / Market Intelligence

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