Head of Engineering

About Tawk.to Tawk.to is the world's leading business messaging platform, enabling millions of businesses to communicate and engage with their customers in real time. We are a globally distributed, bootstrapped company with a simple mission — to help businesses meet their customers where they are. As part of our continuous growth, we are seeking a Head of Engineering to lead and scale our global engineering function. This role requires a strategic leader with a strong technical foundation and a proven ability to build and lead high‑performing, distributed teams. Role Overview You will co‑own the entire technical direction of tawk.to with the CTO and be the ultimate owner of engineering execution, reliability, and velocity. You will oversee all engineering teams — including web, mobile, backend, DevOps, QA, and infrastructure — while partnering closely with Product, Design, and Operations to deliver exceptional product experiences to millions of users worldwide. This is a deeply technical, hands‑on leadership role: you will still dive into architecture discussions, review critical PRs, and be the incident commander during major incidents. Key Responsibilities 1. Strategy & Technical Leadership Co‑define and drive the engineering vision in partnership with the CTO, ensuring alignment with product and business strategy. Lead the evolution of platform architecture to support global scalability, performance, and reliability. Translate product goals into actionable engineering plans and measurable outcomes. 2. Team Leadership & Development Lead, mentor, and scale engineering teams across multiple time zones (Malaysia, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Latvia, and beyond). Build a culture of accountability, innovation, and collaboration within a remote‑first environment. Set and monitor performance standards and career growth paths for engineering managers and leads. Ensure effective communication, alignment, and collaboration across distributed teams. 3. Engineering Excellence Hands‑on partnership with the CTO on technical architecture, from backend systems to APIs, frontend, and mobile apps. Strategic use of AI inside engineering (developer productivity, code analysis, automated QA) Champion world‑class Developer Experience (DX) by shaping tools, processes, documentation, and engineering workflows that enable fast, safe, and joyful development. Ensure reliability, uptime, and performance through proactive monitoring and optimization. Partner with DevOps to ensure scalability, cost efficiency, and operational resilience. Implement robust processes for development, CI/CD, testing, and deployment. Ensure security, compliance (SOC2, GDPR), and data‑protection standards are exceeded. 4. Execution & Delivery Oversee delivery of product and infrastructure roadmaps, ensuring timely and high‑quality releases. Drive continuous improvement in velocity, quality, and operational efficiency. 5. Cross‑Functional Collaboration Partner with Product and Design to balance innovation with execution. Collaborate with Operations, HR, and Finance for resource planning, budgeting, and vendor management. Qualifications & Experience Education: Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field. Experience & Background: 10+ years in software engineering, with at least 5+ years in engineering leadership roles. Proven experience leading distributed or global engineering teams. Proven experience managing high‑traffic, customer‑facing SaaS platforms. You understand the complexities of real‑time systems (messaging, streaming, notifications). Technical Expertise: Our primary stack includes: Backend: Node.js / TypeScript, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Kafka + Google Pub/Sub, Redis Frontend: Vue.js (admin dashboards and internal tools) Infrastructure: GCP + AWS, Kubernetes, high‑availability distributed systems Real‑time layer: WebSockets at massive scale, low‑latency event delivery We value deep experience with any similar high‑scale, real‑time stack (e.g., Go, Elixir, Java, .NET) as long as you’ve successfully led large Node.js or JavaScript‑heavy organizations before or can ramp extremely quickly. Strong hands‑on background in: Event‑driven architectures and message queues at scale Horizontal scaling of document/no‑SQL databases (MongoDB sharding, Elasticsearch clusters) Cost‑optimized cloud operations Modern SRE practices, observability, and chaos engineering Preferred Attributes: Prior experience in SaaS, messaging, communications, or large‑scale web applications. Strong business acumen with an understanding of product‑led growth models. Passion for mentoring and developing technical leaders. Ability to thrive in a transparent, results‑driven culture. What We Offer: Leadership role with direct impact on a globally recognized product. Competitive salary Growth opportunities in a flat, high‑trust organization. Collaborative and transparent work culture with global exposure. #J-18808-Ljbffr