Director of AI - Native Engineer

We are looking for a Director of AI-Native Engineering, a senior engineering leader who will shape how AI-native development is done at Payoneer. This is not just a team leadership role; it is an opportunity to define the operating model, standards, and architecture for AI-first product development across the organisation.

You will lead multiple AI Pods (or a growing org of Pods), set the technical and methodological direction, and work closely with Product and business leaders to translate complex business challenges into scalable AI-native systems. You will balance strategic leadership with strong technical judgment, ensuring high-quality execution while building an organisation that can move fast and learn continuously.

Responsibilities:

• Lead, grow, and scale multiple AI-native engineering teams (AI Pods), developing managers and senior engineers.
• Define and drive the AI-native engineering strategy, standards, and best practices across the organisation.
• Own end-to-end delivery across teams from problem definition to production, ensuring alignment with business goals.
• Partner with Product, Design, Data, and business stakeholders to shape high-impact solutions and prioritise initiatives.
• Establish and enforce high standards for architecture, scalability, reliability, and code quality.
• Drive adoption of AI-first development methodologies, tools, and workflows across R& D.
• Build and scale evaluation, monitoring, and observability frameworks as a core part of system design.
• Act as a senior technical authority guiding architecture decisions and mentoring engineers and managers.
• Define and evolve the operating model for AI Pods, including ownership, autonomy, and delivery practices.
• Build a strong engineering culture focused on accountability, ownership, continuous improvement, and excellence.
• Hire, develop, and retain top engineering talent, building a high-performing and inclusive organisation.

Requirements:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of building and operating production systems.
• 5+ years of experience leading engineering teams and managers, including scaling organisations and driving cross-team impact.
• Proven experience defining engineering strategy and leading large-scale, complex initiatives.
• Hands-on background in backend or full-stack development, with strong architectural skills.
• Experience building and scaling AI-based systems in production (e. g., agentic systems, orchestration, multi-step workflows).
• Strong understanding of evaluation frameworks, metrics, and production monitoring for AI systems.
• Deep familiarity with modern AI development tools and workflows.
• Experience working in cross-functional environments with Product, Design, and business stakeholders.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence at all levels of the organisation.
• Strong people leadership skills, with a passion for developing leaders and building high-performing teams.
• High ownership mindset, able to operate in ambiguity, make decisions, and drive execution.

Nice to have:

• Experience in fintech or other regulated environments.
• Experience with distributed systems, messaging frameworks (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS), and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience building SaaS platforms in microservices environments.
• Familiarity with frontend technologies (React, Angular).