Job Specifications
PolyAI automates customer service through lifelike voice assistants that let customers lead a conversation. Our voice assistants make it possible for businesses to deliver outstanding customer service that rivals their human agents. Our customers, which include the world's leading logos, are expanding how they use our platform, driving automation of critical customer service operations and integrating PolyAI into their daily customer service workflows.
As VP of Engineering, you'll own the growth and performance of PolyAI's engineering organisation, ensuring we can scale from tens of engineers to hundreds while maintaining world-class product velocity, technical quality, and reliability. You will bring experience from high-growth environments, where ARR and team sizes expanded rapidly, and apply those learnings to PolyAI's journey as we scale from $10M+ to $100M+ ARR.
You'll oversee engineering teams focused on product development, scalability, and reliability. Creating an environment where engineers thrive, innovate, and deliver at speed. You'll balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery, guiding architectural choices while keeping a sharp eye on execution and outcomes.
This is a leadership role, but one where curiosity, experimentation, and technical credibility matter. While you won't need to be hands-on day to day, your ability to prototype, explore emerging technologies, and engage with modern architectures will inspire the team and help us stay at the cutting edge.
What You'll Be Doing
Lead and grow PolyAI's engineering organisation from tens to hundreds of engineers across multiple disciplines and geographies
Build and scale engineering management systems - performance management, hiring, onboarding, and development - to ensure teams are effective, motivated, and high-performing
Partner closely with Product leadership to align engineering execution with company strategy and goals
Guide architectural decisions with a focus on scalable, modern, and resilient design (cloud-native on AWS and Azure, microservices, and beyond)
Drive an appropriate balance between delivery velocity and managing technical debt
Build and oversee engineering teams dedicated to product development, scalability, and reliability, ensuring collaboration across disciplines
Support the adoption of emerging technologies - from new languages and frameworks to agentic architecture, vibe coding, and other machine learning systems - evaluating pros and cons with a critical eye
Foster a culture of curiosity, iteration, and reinvention, encouraging the organisation to re-examine and evolve processes and technologies every 6 -12 months
Build strong team culture across distributed settings (hybrid in-person and remote), spanning multiple nationalities and working styles
We'd love to hear from you if you have:
Experience scaling engineering organisations from ~20 to 200+ engineers, including managing managers and directors
A track record of leading in high-growth SaaS environments (2 - 3x ARR growth year on year, scaling from ~$10M to $100M+)
Deep experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS and Azure), modern architecture design, and distributed systems at scale
Familiarity with our core languages and technologies (Python, JavaScript/Node.js, Go); experience evaluating and introducing new stacks a plus
Understanding of machine learning systems and how to design engineering infrastructure around them
The ability to navigate tradeoffs between speed and quality, balancing technical debt against delivery velocity
Experience building and running engineering organisations in hybrid settings (part in-person, part remote), with multi-national teams and cultures
Strong leadership presence: personable, clear communicator, and skilled at building trust across functions and levels
Bonus Points If You
Have experience experimenting with or deploying agentic architectures, and can speak to their tradeoffs
Enjoy prototyping or hacking on side projects to demonstrate ideas or inspire the team
Have worked closely with voice AI, conversational AI, or ML-heavy products
We offer competitive compensation based on experience, expertise, and the level of responsibility. This role also includes equity, giving you the opportunity to share in the long-term success of the business. The listed expectations reflect what we're hiring for, so we encourage you to review the job description carefully.
Benefits
Participation in the company's employee share options plan
25 days holiday, plus bank holidays
Flexible working from home policy
Work from outside of the UK for up to 6 months each year
TELUS Health EAP 24/7 - offers you and your chosen family confidential, judgment-free support for any work, health, or life challenge
Enhanced parental leave
Bike2Work scheme
Annual learning and development allowance
We're all about making WFH work for you - that's why we offer a one-off WFH allowance when you join. Offering perks like noise-cancelling