Director, Software Engineering

About Data & Technology Solutions 

WPP’s Data & Technology Solutions is WPP’s unified global data and technology organisation. We build the platforms, products, and engineering capabilities that power marketing transformation at scale. 

WPP Open is our AI-powered platform for marketing. It connects people, data, tools, and AI into a single ecosystem, enabling teams to deliver better outcomes faster, more efficiently, and at global scale. 

Our teams of engineers, product leaders, and operators work across multiple domains to build systems that power planning, execution, and delivery for some of the world’s largest brands. 

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR 

We are looking for a senior product-minded engineering leader to drive delivery and execution for our commerce product area and to lead the application of AI into our SDLC. 

You will be core part of our product development process and help to inform roadmap and will lead your team in translating product priorities into reliable, high‑quality engineering outcomes. Additionally, you will lead the application and adaptation of AI-driven development practices, ensuring systems operate effectively in real‑world, production environments. This role requires strong systems thinking, cross-functional collaboration, and the ability to manage complex integrations in a rapidly developing environment. 

Work in this area spans both core commerce marketing systems and the data flows and pipelines required to interact with these systems, requiring a blend of data-aware system design, application engineering, and integration engineering. 

You are: 

• A product-focused engineering leader with strong technical credibility and demonstrated ability in influencing and driving the roadmap.  

• Comfortable operating in integration-heavy, business-critical systems 

• Significant experience in programme design and systems architecture. 

• Demonstrated portfolio incorporating AI driven development into the end-to-end SDLC.  

• Data & metrics-driven, able to manage complexity across multiple teams, platforms and external partners. 

• Focused on outcomes tied to business performance. 

WHAT YOU WILL DO 

Engineering Leadership & Team Development 

• Lead engineering delivery across teams building commerce marketing capabilities. 

• Establish and develop team mentorship paths aiming to incorporate agents into day-to-day work. 

• Accountable for the career growth and development of senior engineers and their teams across craft, delivery and business outcomes. 

Stakeholder Alignment & XFN Collaboration 

• Act as the primary engineering partner to Product, Design, Commercial, and Delivery stakeholders. 

• Translate business requirements into actionable engineering outcomes and technical product direction. 

• Drive alignment with engineering leads and XFNs from partner teams to deliver integrated roadmaps. 

End-to-End Accountability 

• Take ownership across the full software development lifecycle — from discovery through to release and post-production maintenance. 

• Ensure systems are reliable, performant, and capable of operating under real-world conditions. 

WHAT YOU WILL NEED 

• 12+ years of software engineering experience 

• Proven experience delivering complex, operational systems at scale 

• Strong experience with APIs, distributed systems, and integrations 

• Experience working with systems that integrate with external platforms or partner ecosystems 

• Strong understanding of system performance, latency, and production reliability 

• Hands-on experience delivering AI-enabled product features into production, including integrating LLMs and generative AI services 

• Strong experience with modern cloud data warehouse and lakehouse platforms (e.g. Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, Redshift) 

• Solid understanding of data modelling, ELT/ETL pipelines, and orchestration tooling (e.g. dbt, Airflow), including data quality, lineage, and governance 

• Deep experience architecting and operating systems on major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, and/or GCP) 

• Strong knowledge of cloud-native architecture patterns, including microservices, containers and Kubernetes, serverless, and event-driven design 

• Experience with infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform), CI/CD, observability, cloud security and IAM, and cloud cost optimisation (FinOps) 

• Demonstrated ability to lead delivery in multi-team, dependency-heavy environments 

• Strong stakeholder management across Product, Delivery, and Engineering 

If you are ready to lead engineering delivery at scale, working across complex systems and driving real business outcomes, we encourage you to apply. 

We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process. 

WPP is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to fostering a culture of inclusion, respect, and equal opportunity for all.