Senior Engineering Manager

About the Role:

• PxD is looking for a technically strong engineering leader to own the delivery and development of our technology platforms. This is a hands-on role requiring both technical leadership and people management.
• Our primary platform, Paddy, is a two-way communications system built on Erlang that delivers agricultural advisory to millions of smallholder farmers via SMS, IVR, and chat. We are also building PaddyAI, a generative AI assistant that enables agronomists to produce hyper-localised, personalised advisory content at scale.
• The technology function itself is still taking shape — meaning the person in this role will have genuine influence over architecture decisions, team capability, and ways of working. There is real scope to build something meaningful here. The systems we create serve millions of smallholder farmers, and we think that matters.
• In this role, you will work closely with Program and Research teams to design, build, and scale reliable technology solutions that advance our organisational goals. You will lead a team of seven, setting high standards and creating the conditions for them to do their best work.

Key Responsibilities:

Engineering Leadership

• Guide system architecture, design decisions, and technology choices
• Define and drive the engineering roadmap, consolidating existing systems and planning for scale across current and new geographies
• Scope projects, manage technical trade-offs, and unblock delivery. 
• Stay hands-on enough to review designs, guide implementation, and resolve critical technical issues., 
• Improve standards for testing, security, deployment, monitoring, and documentation. 

Team Leadership

• Manage a distributed team of 6 staff across India and Kenya. 
• Set priorities, clarify expectations, and hold the team accountable for delivery.
• Coach team members, give feedback, and lead performance reviews.
• Improve team planning, communication, and documentation.

Technical Partner to Leadership, Program, Research

• Turn organizational priorities into clear technical plans.
• Explain technical risks and trade-offs in plain language.
• Evaluate new ideas and prototypes before engineering commits time.
• Keep the team focused on high-impact, feasible work. 

Technology & Systems

• Continuously improve engineering processes, tools, and frameworks
• Make architecture and technology decisions that keep systems reliable, scalable, and maintainable
• Ensure strong DevOps practices 
• Contribute to long-term technology strategy and architecture evolution

Required Skills & Experience:

Leadership & Management

• Significant experience (~10+ years) in software engineering, with a demonstrated track record (~4+ years) in an Engineering Manager role  
• Experience managing and developing engineering teams
• Able to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Comfortable working with incomplete information and shifting priorities

Technical Expertise

• Strong experience in backend and/or full-stack development
• Experience working with telephony engineering (voice, SMS)
• Familiarity with A/B testing 
• Proven experience keeping high-volume cloud systems reliable in production through sound CI/CD, system observability and tight incident reponse practices