Company Overview:
We're Zocks, a venture capital-backed AI startup changing the world of financial services, and other industries that value security and privacy. Our founding team built their careers working on real-time communication products, building enterprise platforms, and crafting tools for some of the most security-conscious industries. With experience gained from industry leaders like Twilio, IBM, Microsoft, and Hearsay Systems, we're using AI to bridge human conversations with enterprise systems, starting with financial services.
Our focus, although simple, is powerful: reinventing business operations and transforming the areas that often get bogged down by slow, inefficient processes. Our innovative platform allows people to communicate naturally, while we capture the information they need, so they can avoid data entry, streamline their operations, and spend more time on what matters most: their clients.
Location: Budapest, XI. (On-site Monday to Thursday, Remote on Fridays)
As Zocks continues to grow, we're looking for a Vice President of Engineering to help us scale not just our technology, but our engineering organization, playing a key role in scaling a fast-growing AI company. You'll work side by side with our founders, including our CTO, leading our Engineering Managers while helping define how Engineering evolves as we continue building one of the leading AI platforms serving financial advisors across the United States.
Today, our engineering organization consists of several development teams (and continues to grow), led by Engineering Managers. In this role, you'll be responsible for developing our engineering leaders, strengthening our engineering culture, and ensuring the organization scales while maintaining high standards of delivery, quality and collaboration.
This is a highly strategic leadership position. Rather than joining to execute an existing engineering playbook, you'll have genuine ownership in shaping how Engineering operates at Zocks. Working closely with our CTO, you'll help define our engineering strategy, organizational structure and operating principles, making pragmatic decisions that fit our product, our business and our culture.
We're looking for someone who enjoys building, not just managing. Someone who sees scaling an engineering organization as an opportunity to create better systems, stronger leaders and a healthier culture—not simply add more people.
Key challenges you will work on every day:
- Partner closely with the CTO to define and execute the long-term engineering strategy for Zocks.
- Lead, mentor and develop Engineering Managers through coaching, feedback, performance management and career development.
- Build a high-performing engineering organization focused on ownership, accountability, continuous improvement and sustainable growth.
- Drive engineering effectiveness by improving delivery predictability, execution quality, planning processes and organizational health.
- Shape how Engineering scales by introducing pragmatic, high-impact improvements that fit our business and culture, rather than applying one-size-fits-all frameworks.
- Lead large cross-functional technical initiatives spanning multiple engineering teams, ensuring clear ownership, alignment and successful execution.
- Create alignment across Engineering while empowering teams and leaders to make great decisions close to where the work happens.
- Partner with Product leadership to balance customer needs, business priorities and long-term engineering investments.
- Define scalable engineering processes, organizational structures and operating mechanisms as our engineering organization continues to grow.
- Support technical direction at an organizational level while empowering Engineering Managers and technical leaders to own implementation and technical decisions.
- Champion engineering excellence across architecture, quality, security, reliability and operational maturity.
- Represent Engineering in customer-facing conversations when needed, confidently communicating technical strategy, delivery plans and organizational capabilities to customers and external stakeholders.
Requirements:
- 10+ years of experience in Software Engineering, including extensive experience leading engineering organizations through multiple layers of management.
- Proven experience as a Director of Engineering, VP of Engineering, Head of Engineering, or in a comparable second-line engineering leadership role.
- Demonstrated success building and developing Engineering Managers while scaling high-performing engineering organizations.
- Strong background in product-led B2B SaaS companies. Experience in software product companies is essential; agency or consulting backgrounds are not a fit for this role.
- Experience defining engineering strategy, operating models and organizational design with a high degree of ownership and autonomy.
- Track record of improving engineering effectiveness, delivery predictability and leading complex cross-functional initiatives.
- Outstanding leadership, coaching and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence across Engineering, Product and Executive Leadership.
- Excellent English and Hungarian communication skills, including experience representing Engineering in customer-facing or executive-level conversations.
- Exposure to security, compliance or enterprise software environments.
- Technical credibility gained from working in modern cloud-native software organizations. While this isn't a hands-on coding role, you're comfortable discussing architecture, engineering trade-offs and technical strategy with senior engineering leaders.
- Interest in AI technologies and building AI-powered products is a strong advantage.
Why this role is different:
- You'll work directly with our founders and help shape company-wide engineering strategy.
- You'll have genuine ownership over how Engineering evolves—not just how it executes.
- You'll build leaders, not just teams, and help scale an engineering organization through people.
- You'll play a key role in building an AI-first B2B SaaS company with ambitious growth plans.
- You'll have the opportunity to leave a lasting organizational legacy by creating systems, culture and leadership practices that scale with the company.
What success looks like:
- You build an engineering organization that scales through strong leaders, delivers predictably, and continuously raises the bar on quality, execution and collaboration.
- You become a trusted strategic partner to our CTO, helping shape not only how we build software, but how Engineering evolves as a core competitive advantage for Zocks.
- You foster a culture where Engineering Managers thrive, teams take ownership, and engineers can do their best work.
- You help create an engineering organization that people are excited to join—and proud to be part of.
- Most importantly, you leave the engineering organization stronger than you found it.
What we offer on top of our competitive base salary:
-Premium Health Insurance
-SZÉP-card
-L&D contribution
-AYCM package
-Employee equity program
-Extra PTO
-Home office support
-Your lunch is on us when you are in the office
-Fully stacked office snacks
Location: Budapest, XI. (On-site Monday to Thursday, Remote on Fridays)
We are an equal opportunity employer and never discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. At Zocks, we value diversity and believe that it enhances our creativity, innovation, and overall success. We encourage all qualified individuals to apply.
