VP of Engineering
About Codal
Codal is an award-winning digital consultancy that helps enterprise organizations solve complex problems and accelerate growth through elegant, data-driven digital solutions. Our areas of expertise include application modernization, ecommerce, UX/UI design, product strategy, data analytics, and artificial intelligence. We are the premium development partner for global brands across life sciences, manufacturing, B2B platforms and ecommerce.
At Codal you will collaborate with some of the most innovative organizations in the world and work on technologies that push the boundaries of design and software development. You will also be part of a community that promotes long-term success, not just for our clients but for each other.
The role
Codal is searching for a VP of Engineering to serve as the senior-most technical leader in the firm. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will oversee a global engineering organization of 200+ professionals across the US, UK and India.
Your mission is to industrialize Codal's technical delivery, establish our AI engineering standards, and turn engineering into a clear commercial advantage in every sales cycle we run. You will be the technical voice in the room with Fortune 500 CIOs and CTOs, and the operating leader our delivery teams rely on to ship.
What you'll own
Strategic engineering leadership
- Operationalize executive goals into technical reality with a near-term focus on a standardized AI engineering toolkit and the continued expansion of our global nearshore and offshore delivery model
- Set the multi-year engineering roadmap in partnership with the CEO, Product leadership and Sales
- Own engineering capacity, billable utilization, gross margin and quality across all hubs, with target utilization benchmarks in the 75 to 85 percent range for senior delivery roles
Commercial and pre-sales partnership
- Partner with Sales and the CEO on the largest, most complex deals; act as the technical executive sponsor on $2M+ pursuits
- Lead architecture and feasibility conversations directly with client CIOs, CTOs and VPs of Engineering; own the technical narrative in finalist meetings
- Govern our pre-sales scoping process so that estimates, staffing and delivery models stay accurate as deals get more complex
- Translate complex technical roadmaps into commercial language for non-technical stakeholders and C-suite executives
Cloud and AI orchestration
- Act as the executive sponsor for our cloud and data partnerships and own the technical relationships with GCP, AWS, Azure, Databricks, Sanity and our other strategic platforms
- Define how Codal builds with AI at the enterprise level: LLM orchestration, retrieval architectures, evaluation, guardrails, agent frameworks, and the build vs buy decisions that go with them
- Establish a standardized AI engineering toolkit so every team ships modern, AI-native solutions to clients by default, not by exception
- Stay sharp on emerging methodologies (advanced microservices patterns, composable architectures, edge compute, agentic systems) and decide where Codal places its bets
Organizational design and delivery
- Refine the interaction model between US-based architects and our UK and India engineering hubs so handoffs are clean and follow-the-sun delivery is a real capability, not a slogan
- Build the structures, career ladders and rituals that let Engineering Directors and Leads thrive at scale
- Manage Managers, not just ICs: directly lead a tier of Engineering Directors and Leads, and grow the next layer of technical leadership
- Own engineering hiring strategy in partnership with Talent: roles, ladders, leveling and the bar for senior architects
Quality, security and governance
- Define the Codal Standard for security, scalability, performance and accessibility, and make it real on every project, not just the high-profile ones
- Implement DORA metrics, SLOs and automated DevSecOps pipelines so engineering health is visible, measurable and improving quarter over quarter
- Own technical risk across the portfolio: red-team large engagements, intervene early when delivery signals turn negative
- Lead post-mortems and engineering reviews with the rigor of a serious consulting firm, not the politeness of a vendor
Innovation, R&D and thought leadership
- Proactively identify emerging technologies and methodologies and decide what becomes a Codal capability
- Sponsor internal R&D investments, hack weeks and POCs that turn into real client offerings
- Represent Codal externally: conferences, partner events, executive briefings, podcasts, and our engineering blog
- Contribute to our patent and IP strategy as our platforms and accelerators mature
Talent and culture
- Mentor and grow a tier of Engineering Directors and Leads, building a real professional roadmap that retains the best people
- Set the engineering culture across three geographies: high-trust, technically excellent, commercially aware, and free of theater
- Be the engineer's engineer: someone the team respects technically and personally
Ideal candidate
- Experience: 15+ years in software engineering, with 5+ years in a senior leadership role (VP, SVP or Head of Engineering) inside a digital consultancy, systems integrator or professional services firm. Background at a large, leading consulting firm is a strong signal
- Org scale: Proven track record running engineering organizations of 100+ people across multiple geographies, including offshore or nearshore hubs
- Managing management: Comfortable leading Engineering Directors and Leads, not just individual contributors, and growing the leaders beneath you
- Executive architecture: Able to design and defend complex, multi-cloud architectures for Fortune 500 clients and turn that work into firm-wide standards, not one-off project decisions
- Commercial acumen: Strong track record in pre-sales: scoping, estimating, executive selling, and closing complex enterprise engagements. You can read a P&L and you understand utilization, gross margin and rate cards
- Tech depth: Deep historical expertise in Node.js, Python and React, with the modern ability to lead teams through migrations to Go, Rust, and AI-integrated stacks
- Cloud mastery: Expert-level knowledge of GCP, AWS and Azure, specifically around enterprise scalability, cost optimization, and data sovereignty
- AI fluency: Real experience shipping production AI systems, including LLM orchestration, retrieval, evaluation and the operational realities of running AI in regulated industries
- Methodology: Expert in Agile and Scrum at scale, with a strong focus on clean code, automated testing and continuous delivery; comfortable with Docker, Kubernetes and modern CI/CD
- Communication: Exceptional written and spoken communication; able to translate complex technical roadmaps for boards, C-suites and skeptical buyers
- Education: Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical field
How this role will be measured
- Engineering gross margin and utilization across all hubs
- Win rate and average deal size on the engagements you sponsor in pre-sales
- Quality benchmarks: DORA metrics, defect escape rate, customer NPS for engineering delivery
- Adoption of the Codal AI engineering toolkit across active client engagements
- Retention of senior engineering leaders and architects
Why you'll want this role
- A 200+ person engineering organization with real client work for global brands across life sciences, manufacturing, B2B, e--commerce, AI workflows and other complex technical projects
- Real authority over standards, hiring, partnerships and AI strategy,
- Partnership with a CEO who wants a technical co-pilot, not a yes-person
- Direct relationships with CIOs and CTOs from day one
- A firm that is investing in engineering as a growth lever, not treating it as a cost center
Location and logistics
- Based in Chicago, hybrid (3 days in office)
- Reports to the CEO
- Travel: 15 to 25 percent, primarily to client sites, our UK office and our India delivery hub
Compensation
- $200–300k base, depending on experience (may stretch higher for exceptional candidates)
- Executive performance bonus tied to engineering margin, growth and delivery quality (eligible after the first hear)
- Long-term incentive participation, health benefits, 401(k) and standard Codal executive perks