Engineering Group Lead (AI)

Location: Hybrid working model at the Zagreb site, Croatia

Company

HR technology company providing an intuitive, data-driven platform that helps mid-size and multinational businesses manage, engage, develop, and retain their people.

What you will do

• Define and execute the technical vision for the Talent Acquisition engineering group and scale the domain within the broader platform.
• Lead approximately 17 people across multiple teams, including seven direct reports, and mentor engineering managers, technical leaders, and senior individual contributors.
• Own engineering delivery by translating product and business priorities into technical plans, goals, and KPIs.
• Provide architectural leadership for scalability, reliability, maintainability, infrastructure, and long-term technical evolution, including high-level prototypes, POCs, and beta testing.
• Partner with Product, Architecture, Platform, DevOps, external vendors, and global R&D teams to align roadmaps, resolve dependencies, and support delivery.
• Serve as the most senior leader at the Zagreb site, supporting local guidance, site coordination, occasional operations, hiring, and continuous improvements in developer effectiveness, AI practices, quality, and system stability.

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience as a Group Lead or equivalent, leading multiple engineering teams and managers in a fast-paced SaaS or platform company.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience with a strong hands-on technical foundation.
• 5+ years of people-management experience, including developing engineering managers, technical leaders, and high-performing teams.
• Experience with AI-driven development practices, tooling, or agentic technologies.
• Proven experience owning and scaling a significant product, module, or technical domain in a SaaS environment.
• Experience leading engineering organizations through scale-up, with expertise in scalable systems, backend services, infrastructure, and long-term architectural decisions.
• Strategic mindset and ability to connect architectural direction with immediate product and business impact.
• Strong people leadership, communication, stakeholder-management, alignment, and influencing skills across distributed global teams.
• Experience working across multiple geographies and cultures and operating in complex environments with multiple stakeholders, dependencies, and competing priorities.

Nice to have

• Experience in HR tech, fintech, or other complex information-system environments.
• Strong experience with backend services, distributed systems, or data-intensive products.
• Experience contributing to engineering site leadership or working with external engineering vendors.
• Experience providing senior leadership at a local site, including team guidance, site coordination, and occasional operational ownership.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work at the Zagreb site with Work From Anywhere opportunities.
• Quarterly Balance Days, birthday time off, wedding leave, anniversary gifts, and volunteering time off.
• Paid baby bonding leave, pension contributions, sick leave support, and a monthly meal allowance.
• Mental wellbeing support through Headspace and employee assistance through Unmind.
• Employee referral program offering $2,500 for each successful hire.