Head of Software Development

Location: Remote, Philippines-based (must be open to relocating to Manila if required) Type: Full-time, executive Reports to: Chief Technology Officer

About us

We are a Philippine-registered technology company set up to build and operate digital platforms for electronic transactions and automated business processes. Our first mandate is a national-scale digital trade platform that links government agencies, financial institutions, and private operators into one system. We are the designated operating company for that project, which means every project responsibility, risk, and performance commitment sits inside one entity, with a contract term that runs for years rather than months.

That structure shapes how we work. We build the systems, run them, and stay accountable for their performance over the full lifecycle, so decisions about architecture, security, and operations are ours to make and ours to live with. We are a private-sector partner to government, and our reputation depends on the platform staying up, secure, and compliant with the laws and contractual obligations that govern it.

The company is early. You would be joining as one of the first engineering leaders, with a signed national mandate, real delivery deadlines, and the chance to build the software organisation from the ground up.

The job

You will run the software engineering organisation that builds and operates our platforms. The CTO owns technology strategy and the contractual relationship with agencies and partners; you own delivery. That means the sprints, the releases, the code quality, the production stability, and the people, from engineering managers and tech leads down to individual developers.

The work is not greenfield product development in a vacuum. Our platforms have contractual delivery dates, agreed service levels, and integrations into government and institutional systems that were not designed with us in mind. You will need to hit committed milestones while building the engineering discipline that keeps the platform maintainable for years, and you will need to do both without burying the team in process.

This is a management role with a hands-on floor. When a release is at risk or a production incident is open, we expect you in the detail, not waiting for a report.

What you will do

Run software delivery end to end. Own the pipeline from requirements and solution design through development, testing, release, and production support. Manage sprint planning, release cycles, delivery dependencies, and the resolution of critical technical issues. Hit the software milestones in our contracts: integrations, technical acceptance, and delivery dates.

Set and enforce engineering standards. Put in place the practices you would expect of a serious engineering organisation: coding standards, peer review, secure development, automated testing, CI/CD, DevSecOps, observability, release management, documentation, and technical-debt control. Keep benchmarking against how good teams work now, and update the standards when a change genuinely improves quality, security, or speed rather than because a framework is fashionable.

Adopt AI-assisted development where it pays. Bring AI into coding, testing, documentation, and troubleshooting where it measurably improves speed or quality, and keep it out where it compromises governance or security. You will work with the CTO on this; the company's plan is a smaller, faster, AI-enabled engineering organisation, and your part is making that real at the level of daily development work.

Deliver complex integrations. Lead the software side of multi-agency delivery: interoperability, API integration, data exchange, and legacy-system integration, coordinated across internal teams, system integrators, vendors, and institutional stakeholders. Spot delivery risks early, put mitigation plans in place, and report progress and dependencies in a way the CTO and founders can act on.

Build the team. Recruit, develop, and retain engineering managers, tech leads, and developers. Set clear accountability and measurable KPIs, run performance management and succession planning, and build a culture where people own their work and ship.

What you will be measured on

• Delivery predictability: milestones hit on the agreed dates
• Development velocity and engineering productivity, without trading away quality or security
• Code quality, automated test coverage, defect levels, and release quality
• Production stability, incident response, and service levels within the software scope
• Integrations and interoperability deliverables completed and stable
• Technical debt, documentation, and maintainability under control
• Team capability, retention, and succession readiness

Who we are looking for

You have 12 to 18+ years in software engineering, with substantial time managing development organisations: engineering managers, tech leads, and multiple workstreams running at once. You have professionalised or scaled an engineering organisation before and can describe what its delivery performance looked like before and after you.

Your knowledge of engineering practice is current, not a memory of how things worked at your last-but-one employer. You can go deep on architecture, cloud environments, databases, APIs, integration patterns, security, and production operations. You have shipped in enterprise software, digital platforms, fintech, or other large transaction-based production environments, and you have delivered at least one system where multiple institutions, legacy integrations, and stakeholders outside your control were the hard part.

Experience introducing AI-assisted development, or working with government and institutional stakeholders on national-scale or regulated projects, is a strong advantage.

You must be based in the Philippines. The role is remote day to day, but delivery for this project sometimes needs people in a room, so you must be open to relocating to Manila if the project requires it.

The first 12 months

By the end of your first year you will have:

• Assessed the development organisation and reshaped the leadership structure and delivery model where needed
• Established and enforced a modern software-development standards framework
• Improved delivery predictability, velocity, code quality, testing discipline, and production stability, with the numbers to show it
• Set measurable engineering KPIs and clear accountability across teams and leaders
• Strengthened CI/CD, DevSecOps, observability, documentation, and technical-debt practices
• Introduced AI-assisted development where it improves productivity and quality
• Delivered the priority platforms, integrations, and contractual commitments on the agreed timelines

The goal beyond that is an engineering organisation that can support several mission-critical platforms at once without delivery quality slipping.