VP, Global Engineering (AdTech)

Location: Must be based in the UK or Sweden and work regularly from the London or Stockholm office.

Company

hirify.global operates a global podcast marketplace connecting creators, advertisers, and listeners across podcast apps and listening platforms.

What you will do

• Own engineering strategy, planning, delivery metrics, architecture governance, scalability, technical debt, and engineering investment.
• Lead the engineering of hosting and distribution, real-time and dynamic ad insertion, auction and yield systems, targeting and measurement data platforms, and creator and advertiser self-serve products.
• Ensure 24/7 platform reliability, performance, security, cost discipline, and infrastructure modernisation while extending the platform into video and adjacent channels.
• Lead, structure, develop, and budget a distributed engineering organisation across multiple countries, including management capability, career paths, succession, and selective hiring.
• Partner with product, commercial, sales, data, and security teams on priorities, integrations, advertiser conversations, technical diligence, and post-merger integration.
• Own AI adoption in engineering and the platform, including AI-assisted tooling, automation, ad decisioning, contextual targeting, measurement, and creator tooling.

Requirements

• Significant experience leading a large engineering organisation as a manager of managers at a company of comparable or greater scale.
• Experience improving delivery performance, engineering quality, and operating rhythm in an organisation that had outgrown its structure.
• Strong depth in high-volume distributed systems, infrastructure, real-time processing, reliability, and cost management at scale.
• Experience in marketplaces, streaming, or another two-sided platform where technology carries the revenue model.
• Demonstrated success building management capability, developing senior engineering leaders, and strengthening succession.
• Experience leading distributed teams across locations, cultures, and time zones, including in-house and near-shore teams.
• Experience with platform modernisation, legacy replacement, and M&A integration.
• Enough technical depth to engage credibly with complex multi-platform environments and make pragmatic architectural decisions without being a hands-on architect.
• Proven ability to partner with product leadership as an equal and work closely with commercial teams, with clear communication for technical, commercial, executive, and Board audiences.
• People-first, high-EQ, strategic, commercially driven, customer-obsessed, data-led, resilient, curious, and comfortable with complexity, ambiguity, and executive-level influence.

Nice to have

• Direct experience with dynamic ad insertion or auction systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Remote-first global engineering organisation with regular face-to-face collaboration for this role.
• Autonomy, continuous improvement, and a people-first, open, inclusive, and caring environment.
• Emphasis on ownership, craft, openness, accountability, and career development.
• Equal opportunity employment and a diverse workplace.