Director of Engineering

Director of Engineering

Location: This position can be remote and requires travel

Company Overview

Robots Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there.

We’ve earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.

Position Overview

The Director of Engineering is a senior leadership role at Robots Pencils, responsible for the technical health, delivery performance, and talent growth of a geographically aligned engineering organization. This is a director-level position with regional P L accountability, client-facing responsibility, and direct influence over how R P delivers AI-forward engineering at scale.

We’re looking for someone who has been an engineer — who has shipped real software and led real projects — and who has evolved into a leader that builds teams, develops talent, and drives outcomes. You bring a consulting mindset, a bias for action, and the kind of deep AI and agentic development expertise that can change how a client operates. You don’t just stay current on AI tools; you teach others how to use them, set the standard, and demonstrate what great looks like every day.

This role requires 10+ years of overall engineering experience, with at least 3 years in an Engineering Manager or Director capacity leading multi-person technical teams.

Why This Role Matters

At Robots Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate.

Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on.

What You’ll Do

Lead and grow a geographically aligned engineering organization at the director level, owning regional P L, setting the standard for AI-forward engineering, and ensuring successful delivery of client and internal initiatives while developing technical talent and maintaining engineering excellence.

Key Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and grow a geographically aligned engineering organization, developing technical talent and the next layer of engineering leaders.

Champion adoption of AI-forward tools and AI-assisted delivery, raising both velocity and expertise.

Partner with sales, verticals, and practice leaders to align engineering capacity with business demand and staff teams with the right skills and experience.

Foster a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement, where engineers verify and stand behind AI-assisted work.

Drive adoption of engineering standards, security requirements, and quality practices across an AI-augmented software development lifecycle.

Use data to manage delivery performance, resource utilization, and team health, layering AI-assisted delivery signals onto core engineering metrics.

Build team AI capability through coaching, upskilling, and knowledge sharing, leaving no engineer behind as tools and practices evolve.

Support workforce planning, recruiting, onboarding, performance management, and succession planning for future technical leaders.

Collaborate with other Engineering Directors and Managers to keep standards consistent across regions, and escalate and resolve staffing, delivery, and personnel challenges as needed.

Own regional P L, including revenue accountability, margin performance, and resource investment decisions for the engineering organization.

Actively participate in recruiting and interviewing for senior technical roles, evaluating candidates against both technical and cultural standards and partnering with Talent to build engineering hiring pipelines.

Set the standard for AI-forward engineering practice — using tools like Claude and Cursor with sophistication, modeling what great looks like, and helping the team adopt AI tools effectively and with confidence.

Lead the design and delivery of AI/ML systems end-to-end, from architecture decisions throug…