About the Role:
PxD is looking for a technically strong engineering leader to own the delivery and development of our technology platforms. This is a hands-on role requiring both technical leadership and people management.
Our primary platform, Paddy, is a two-way communications system built on Erlang that delivers agricultural advisory to millions of smallholder farmers via SMS, IVR, and chat. We are also building PaddyAI, a generative AI assistant that enables agronomists to produce hyper-localised, personalised advisory content at scale.
The technology function itself is still taking shape — meaning the person in this role will have genuine influence over architecture decisions, team capability, and ways of working. There is real scope to build something meaningful here. The systems we create serve millions of smallholder farmers, and we think that matters.
In this role, you will work closely with Program and Research teams to design, build, and scale reliable technology solutions that advance our organisational goals. You will lead a team of seven, setting high standards and creating the conditions for them to do their best work.
Key Responsibilities:
Engineering Leadership
Guide system architecture, design decisions, and technology choices
Define and drive the engineering roadmap, consolidating existing systems and planning for scale across current and new geographies
Scope projects, manage technical trade-offs, and unblock delivery.
Stay hands-on enough to review designs, guide implementation, and resolve critical technical issues.,
Improve standards for testing, security, deployment, monitoring, and documentation.
Team Leadership
Manage a distributed team of 6 staff across India and Kenya.
Set priorities, clarify expectations, and hold the team accountable for delivery.
Coach team members, give feedback, and lead performance reviews.
Improve team planning, communication, and documentation.
Technical Partner to Leadership, Program, Research
Turn organizational priorities into clear technical plans.
Explain technical risks and trade-offs in plain language.
Evaluate new ideas and prototypes before engineering commits time.
Keep the team focused on high-impact, feasible work.
Technology & Systems
Continuously improve engineering processes, tools, and frameworks
Make architecture and technology decisions that keep systems reliable, scalable, and maintainable
Ensure strong DevOps practices
Contribute to long-term technology strategy and architecture evolution
Required Skills & Experience:
Leadership & Management
Significant experience (~10+ years) in software engineering, with a demonstrated track record (~4+ years) in an Engineering Manager role
Experience managing and developing engineering teams
Able to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders
Comfortable working with incomplete information and shifting priorities
Technical Expertise
Strong experience in backend and/or full-stack development
Experience working with telephony engineering (voice, SMS)
Familiarity with A/B testing
Proven experience keeping high-volume cloud systems reliable in production through sound CI/CD, system observability and tight incident reponse practices