Senior Director, Engineering

Senior Director of Engineering (Level 8)

Location: Remote (UK) ¦ Team Size: 130+ Engineers ¦ Reports to: CTO

About IRIS Software Group

IRIS Software Group is one of the UK’s largest privately held software companies, powering critical operations for over 100,000 customers in 135 countries. From payroll and HR to compliance and education, our solutions keep businesses, schools, and organisations running smoothly, every day, for millions of people. We’re a certified Great Place to Work and recognised as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women, with a culture built on trust, inclusion, and delivering impact at scale.

The Opportunity

We’re looking for a Senior Director of Engineering to lead a global organisation of 130+ engineers delivering multiple cloud-native and legacy SaaS products.This is more than a technology role. You’ll define and deliver the engineering vision, embed high-performance practices across the software development lifecycle, and build a collaborative, product-led engineering culture that delivers features our customers love, faster and more reliably. You’ll be a 2-box thinker : balancing short-term delivery with long-term strategy, modernising legacy platforms while driving innovation in customer-centric solutions.

What you’ll do

• Lead and inspire a global engineering team, creating clear career paths and fostering a culture of accountability, inclusion, and continuous learning.
• Partner with senior Product leaders to ensure engineering and product work seamlessly together to deliver customer-first, commercially impactful solutions.
• Drive transformation of engineering practices, using metrics and data to improve quality, velocity, and predictability.
• Oversee architecture for both cloud and legacy systems, introducing AI/ML, automation, and modern frameworks where they add real value.
• Champion rapid experimentation, innovation, and strong feedback loops from customers to engineering.

What you’ll bring

• Proven leadership of large engineering organisations (100+ engineers) across multiple locations.
• Strong technical foundation in cloud-native SaaS and architecture (multi-tier, microservices, event-driven, API-first).
• Experience embedding product–engineering collaboration and transforming engineering culture.
• Commercial mindset - able to make technical decisions that deliver business and customer impact.

Please note:

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event that we receive a high volume of applications. Therefore we recommend you apply as soon as possible.