VP of Engineering

Pax8

1d•$215,000 - $275,000

About The Position

Overview: Pax8 is the technology marketplace of the future, linking partners, vendors, and small to midsized businesses (SMBs) through AI-powered insights and comprehensive product support. With a global partner ecosystem of over 35,000 managed service providers, Pax8 empowers SMBs worldwide by providing software and services that unlock their growth potential and enhance their security. Committed to innovating cloud commerce at scale, Pax8 drives customer acquisition and solution consumption across its entire ecosystem. Our purpose is to help every small business turn their dreams into reality through the power of technology. Culture is important to us, and at Pax8, its business, and it IS personal. We embody Compassionate Candour by aiming to assist others with candid, actionable feedback. We Seek to Understand by being open, curious, and committed to learning. We believe in We Before Me, actively collaborating and seeking out diverse perspectives to ensure a win for Team Pax8. Our team takes pride in Do What You Say, taking ownership, honoring commitments, prioritizing, and delivering promises. We encourage everyone to Light Up Learning by being brave and trying new ideas, embracing vulnerability, and sharing failures so everyone can learn. Finally, we are Driven by Passion, connecting personal passion to Pax8's mission, and remaining resilient in the face of adversity and uncertainty in pursuit of our goals. At Pax8, we are passionate, creative, and humorously offbeat. We work hard, keep it fun, and expect the best! Position Summary: The VP of Engineering focuses on driving corporate strategic vision and direction of the Engineering department and defines goals, measurables, and works with other department heads to turn those into actionable items. This role leads the technology realization for agentification of the Pax8 product and software development lifecycle, ensuring Pax8 continues to pioneer the forefront of the agentic and AI revolution. These end-to-end capabilities enable every AI-native role in Product and Engineering, spanning ideation through post-deployment and enabling all programs from architecture to release management. Fast following the progressive internal release of capabilities, they will technically lead the deployment to our partner community and external developer ecosystems to empower scalable monetization of agentic solutions for small and medium-sized businesses across the world. They care for the technical, cultural, and human aspects of building, growing, and strengthening the emerging technology.

Requirements

At least ten (10) years of cloud software engineering or related experience
Proven history of delivering large-scale, cross-functional capabilities that drive lift in measurable business metrics
Experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives that are supported by product and engineering metrics
Experience with AI and agentic systems, cross-functional context engineering, and related design patterns, including: full AI stack, AI tooling, agent workflow, HILT, evaluation, and developer productivity
Expertise in architecture spanning enterprise, application, systems, infrastructure, data, analytics, and security that demonstrate a balance of rapid prototyping with long-term engineering excellence
Experience with AI model and agentic cost optimization, token usage, and related full-stack financial optimizations from cloud through LLM to agent workflow
Deep understanding and commitment to software engineering practices/processes (e.g., Lean, Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, TDD, XP) and continuous improvement through measurement
Understanding of value stream mapping activities as well as core practices like Quality, Application Security, and UI/UX
Strong work ethic with the ability to understand and exhibit Agile principles and methodology
Ability to create new and better ways for the organization to be successful
Ability to build strong customer relationships and deliver customer centric solutions
Ability to consistently achieve results, even under tough circumstances
Ability to paint a compelling picture of the vision and strategy that motivates others to action
Ability to gain the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity
Excellent communication skills for both horizontal and vertical organizational lines
Strong executive presence and highly influential with stakeholders
Proven track record of creating a positive culture focused on execution and delivering software that exceeds customer expectations
B.A./B.S. in related field or equivalent work experience

Responsibilities

Lead cross-functional partnerships across the Product and Engineering organizations, including communicating AI and agentic vision cascaded from executive leadership. Partner deeply with Product leadership to ensure technical foundations align with commercial priorities and partner needs. Establish AI tooling programs, supporting prompt engineering, context engineering, and AI-powered workflows. Collaborate with senior managerial, architectural, and technical leaders in Engineering and Product to ensure seamlessly integration with existing enterprise and line of business systems (10%)
Translate strategy into phased execution guided by observable metrics, progressing from internal automation to global developer ecosystems. Scope of technology automation is end-to-end, product (e.g. ideation, content, research, requirements, roadmaps, design, user experience, and acceptance engineering), engineering (e.g. knowledge base, architecture, documentation, code review, coding, testing, validation, deployment, and devops), and program (e.g. planning, forecasting, tracking, reporting, metrics, and release). Establish governance standards and ai frameworks for agent autonomy, security, and ethics to ensure reliable internal and external deployments. Serve as single threaded leader and internal champion, continuing cultural and process evolution (10%)
Lead ecosystem and external developer enablement for Engineering, including lead external-facing agentic tooling enabling third-party developers to build upon Pax8 agentic solutions, collaborate with ecosystem partners to grow an increasingly thriving agentic community, and ensure technical documentation and developer support are world-class (5%)
Lead in blending build and buy of existing and new infrastructure and tooling, including: line of business tech stacks (design, engineering and product); AI stack; knowledge infrastructure (including RAG, knowledge graph, and metadata); foundational tooling (including internal AI toolkits, MCP tooling, SDKs, and sandboxes that accelerate agent creation); and selection and integration of third-party agents across the lifecycle, from knowledge to operational agents (10%)
Manage and direct the Engineering teams through Directors, Managers, Team Leads, and other direct reports (e.g., hiring, coaching, developing, evaluating, etc.). Defend and grow diversity within the team, seek out new and quiet voices, while growing our culture to a global culture (5%)
Care for professional development opportunities within the organization, both internally and externally. Build an internal pipeline to grow best in class engineers (5%)
Set technical direction for Engineering and related teams, caring for modern best practices such as security, stability, visibility, and quality (5%)
Collaborate cross-functionally with other teams and department heads, find areas of improvement, and build plans for execution (5%)
Plan and deliver team meetings, performance reviews, and career progression paths. Work with managers and directors as a coach and mentor and ensure team members are having a positive experience at all levels of the organization. Create accountability, provide clear prioritization, and care for adequate resourcing (5%)
Scale our engineering teams and build a world-class engineering organization that engineers relish being a part of. Provide coaching and mentoring for our current leaders, inspiring them with a compelling vision & strategy and by recruiting additional top technical and leadership talent (5%)
Partner with our Product leadership to develop the vision for Pax8 Platform products and represent the technical aspects/considerations of the strategy. Provide guidance and oversight on appropriate staffing for delivery teams aligned to support Product initiatives (5%)
Work closely with Product & Engineering leadership to set standards around patterns, frameworks, technologies, and processes to promote a simple and consistent approach across multiple types of services (5%)
Participate in due diligence activities related to acquisitions, especially around technical quality and fit, team competencies, and other business or integration concerns (5%)
Drive transparency and decision making through the product and engineering leadership team with blameless postmortems and iterative improvement programs that focus on product scale and quality (5%)
Defend and grow Pax8 Engineering culture. Embrace, model, and champion all of Pax8’s values: Advoc8, Celebr8, Elev8, Innov8 (5%)
Serve as the technology thought leader within the business to maintain technical standards, security, industry trends, and emerging technologies (5%)