Director of Engineering

Director of Engineering

Location: Hyderabad, India | Department: Engineering & Product Development | Compensation: ₹40-50 LPA (Fixed)

About SmartDocs

SmartDocs is a 16-year-old, profitable, bootstrapped enterprise SaaS company providing procurement and spend management solutions to large enterprises globally. We compete head-to-head with SAP Ariba and Coupa, serving 26 enterprise customers—primarily major US infrastructure organizations whose operations depend on our platform processing millions of dollars in procurement transactions daily.

Our platform processes millions of dollars in procurement transactions for Fortune 500 companies. We're in the midst of an ambitious R&D transformation evolving from our successful bootstrapped roots to implement Silicon Valley-grade engineering operations, processes, and excellence.

This is not a corporate job. This is a builder's role.

People who were associated with US tolling system, spend management platform or Vendor Management system is highly preferable

Who We're Looking For

The Ideal Background

We're specifically seeking technical leaders with entrepreneurial battle scars —those who've been founding engineers, technical co-founders, or early engineering leaders who built something from scratch. You understand what it takes to ship quality software when every decision matters. You've made tough technical calls with real consequences. You know the difference between perfectionism and pragmatism because you've lived both.

You might be:

A technical co-founder or founding engineer who took a startup from idea to production

An early engineering leader (first 5-10 hires) who architected and scaled a product

A tech-savvy entrepreneur who built and shipped a technical product to real customers

A CTO or Engineering Director from a bootstrapped, capital-efficient company

Someone who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with founders/CEOs on mission-critical applications where system reliability directly impacted business survival

What matters most: You've built something significant with your own hands, made critical technical decisions with constrained resources, and understand the weight of engineering choices when real customers and revenue depend on your platform.

We value entrepreneurial experience —whether your venture achieved unicorn status, profitability, got acquired, or taught you invaluable lessons through a pivot or wind-down. What we care about is that you were in the arena making things happen.

The Technical Must-Haves

This isn't about checking boxes—we need someone who can actually architect, build, and fix things when necessary:

Core Technical Requirements

7-15 years of hands-on software engineering experience

Someone who have experience with products or projects in US tolling system, Vendor management system or spend Management.

Expert-level proficiency in:

Java and Spring Boot (not just familiarity—you've architected and built production systems)

MongoDB (you understand document design, indexing, performance optimization)

React or Angular (you can jump into frontend code when needed)

Exposure to Azure (VMs, cloud services, deployments)

Experience with mission-critical applications where system failures have serious business consequences

3-5+ years leading engineering teams —you've managed managers and scaled teams

The "Founder/Builder" Technical DNA

You've written production code recently—not just reviewed it from a distance

You understand technical debt as business trade-offs, not engineering failures

You've made build-vs-buy decisions with real budget constraints

You know how to extract maximum value from lean teams

You've shipped features with imperfect information and learned fast

You've worked directly with business stakeholders (founders, CEOs, customers) translating technical complexity into business outcomes

The Role: What You'll Actually Do

Engineering Leadership (Not Just Management)

Lead 4 engineering managers and 15+ engineers building our Java/Spring Boot/MongoDB/Angular platform

Own end-to-end execution: from sprint planning to production deployment to customer success

Make real-time technical decisions—architecture reviews, production incident response, technical feasibility assessments

Balance feature delivery against technical debt with P&L consciousness (like an owner, not just an employee)

Roll up your sleeves when critical issues need senior technical intervention

Building World-Class Operations (Without Corporate Bureaucracy)

Implement engineering processes that actually improve velocity (not ones that look good on slides)

Establish meaningful metrics—code quality, deployment frequency, incident response times, team velocity

Build CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and deployment automation from scratch or improve existing ones

Create engineering standards that balance enterprise requirements with startup agility

Scale processes from 15 to 50+ engineers without losing execution speed or creating red tape

Strategic Partnership with Leadership

Report directly to our CTO—partner on technical strategy and architecture decisions

Work closely with CEO on company trajectory, R&D transformation, and growth initiatives

Translate technical constraints and opportunities into business language for stakeholders

Collaborate with Product Management on roadmap prioritization and technical feasibility

Coordinate with US-based customers on implementations, integrations, and technical requirements

Technical Transformation Initiatives

Consolidate customer-specific code branches into unified, maintainable codebase

Reduce technical debt systematically without stalling feature delivery

Modernize legacy components while maintaining 99.9% uptime for enterprise customers

Build scalable architecture that supports future growth without over-engineering

Drive adoption of modern development practices that fit our business reality

What Success Looks Like

In 90 Days:

Built credibility with the team through technical competence and decisive action

Identified top 3-5 process improvements and started implementation

Resolved at least one critical technical issue that was blocking progress

Established clear communication rhythms with engineering managers, CTO, and CEO

In 6 Months:

Engineering velocity measurably improved with new processes yielding results

Technical debt reduction roadmap defined and actively in execution

Team morale demonstrably high—engineers respect your technical judgment and leadership

Quick wins delivered that prove your impact to the business

In 12 Months:

Engineering organization operates with startup efficiency and enterprise reliability

Processes scale to support 30-50 engineers without adding bureaucracy

Technical foundation is solid for next phase of company growth

You're the technical leader the CEO and CTO depend on for critical decisions

You're thinking like a business owner, not just an engineering leader

What Makes Someone Right for This

Must-Have Qualities

✅ Execution obsession – You ship. You don't just plan, discuss, and strategize endlessly.

✅ Technical credibility – Engineers respect you because you can do the work, not just manage it.

✅ Owner mentality – You think about ROI, customer impact, and business outcomes.

✅ Comfort with ambiguity – You've operated without perfect processes or unlimited resources.

✅ Direct communication – You tell it straight, especially when delivering hard truths to leadership.

✅ Customer empathy – You've felt the pain of production incidents affecting real users and business operations.

✅ Pragmatic perfectionism – You know when "good enough now" beats "perfect later."

✅ Strategic thinking – You connect engineering decisions to business outcomes naturally.

Deal-Breakers

❌ Pure "process people" who've never written production code or made technical decisions und