About CreateTOTALLY
CreateTOTALLY is a next-generation Marketing Execution and AI Platform that connects media planning to campaign automation, helping data-driven marketers turn insight into action at speed. The platform is live, it has paying clients, and it is entering its next phase of growth. The engineering and AI leadership to drive that phase is what this role is about.
This is a genuine ground-floor engineering opportunity. You will own the product strategy and roadmap as well as the engineering function, reporting directly to the CEO, with real influence over how the technical foundation is built. There is an established platform to own and evolve, a direct line to the CEO, and real influence over where the technology goes next without layers of process slowing you down. If that appeals, read on.
The Role
As Director of Engineering and AI, you will own the end-to-end engineering function and lead the development of new AI capabilities that unlock operational efficiency and client innovation. This role combines hands-on technical leadership with ownership of product strategy and roadmap, ensuring CreateTOTALLY's platform remains scalable, secure, reliable, and commercially differentiated.
You will work closely with the CEO and cross-functional leaders to align technology and product priorities to business goals, drive innovation, and ensure consistent execution and delivery quality. There is no large inherited team and no established playbook. You will shape both.
The right person is a technical leader who stays close to the code, thinks clearly about product, and can build and run an engineering function in a fast-moving, commercially-focused environment.
What You Will Be Doing
Technology Strategy & Engineering Leadership
- Define and communicate the technology strategy in alignment with business objectives
- Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing engineering team; set expectations for quality, pace, and accountability
- Establish and continuously improve best practices and standards across software development, testing, deployment, and operations
- Remain hands-on: developing code, architecture, and core implementation where needed, and provide practical technical direction across the stack
Product Ownership & Roadmap
- Own the product strategy and roadmap for the CreateTOTALLY platform: define priorities, sequence delivery, and manage trade-offs across stability, scalability, and new capability
- Collaborate with stakeholders to define and prioritise features, and deliver high-quality software products on time
- Translate client needs and operational challenges into product and platform improvements with measurable outcomes
Platform Development & Full-Stack Delivery
- Drive development of scalable, reliable platform capabilities that meet customer and stakeholder needs
- Oversee and guide full-stack engineering work: front-end, back-end, services, APIs, data, and integrations, ensuring maintainable architecture and clean delivery
- Ensure engineering execution is predictable and well-governed: release management, incident learnings, documentation, and technical debt management
AI Capability Development
- Lead the design and delivery of AI-powered capabilities that automate operational workflows and reduce manual effort across the business
- Enable new client-facing innovation, including content generation and intelligent automation, that strengthens the platform's commercial differentiation
- Evaluate emerging AI technologies and apply them pragmatically to CreateTOTALLY's platform and workflows
- Ensure AI solutions are production-grade: secure, scalable, monitored, and maintainable. Not demo ware
Technical Operations, Infrastructure & Compliance
- Oversee the design, implementation, and maintenance of technology infrastructure, ensuring scalability, security, performance, and reliability
- Implement robust processes for monitoring, measuring, and optimising system performance and reliability
- Identify key technical risks and manage them through strong engineering discipline and governance
Partnerships & Vendor Management
- Identify and manage strategic technology partners and vendors; negotiate contracts and ensure SLAs are met
What We Are Looking For
Leadership & Delivery
- Proven experience in a senior engineering leadership role (Director of Engineering, Head of Engineering, or equivalent) within a product or platform environment
- Demonstrable track record of building and leading high-performing engineering teams and delivering innovative solutions in fast-paced environments
- Strong product thinking with real ownership of roadmap, prioritisation, and stakeholder management
- Experience building engineering teams with a strong automated testing culture
Hands-On Technical Capability
- Comfortable being hands-on in architecture and delivery while overseeing end-to-end full-stack engineering execution
- Strong experience with modern engineering practices: code quality, automated testing, observability, and secure-by-design systems
- Backend architecture in Node.js ecosystems and Python
- Designing and operating scalable APIs, GraphQL or REST
- Cloud-native architecture (AWS, serverless preferred)
- Database architecture and performance tuning (Postgres preferred)
- Experience with React or modern frontend frameworks
- Experience with GraphQL and Apollo
Creative & Production Tooling
You must be comfortable working around creative production workflows and tooling, including Adobe After Effects, Adobe InDesign, and Figma. This role does not require you to be a designer, but you must be able to understand and guide engineering solutions that integrate with and automate around these tools.
AI Experience
- Practical experience delivering AI/ML or LLM-enabled systems into production, covering internal automation and client-facing features
- Strong judgement on where AI adds value, and how to implement it reliably, securely, and cost-effectively
Character
- You are comfortable being the most senior technical voice in the room, with the CEO, with clients, and with external partners, and you do not need consensus to make a call
- You build things properly the first time, but you know the difference between quality and perfectionism, and you ship
- You are genuinely curious about the product and the market, not just the stack. You want to understand why something matters to a client before you decide how to build it
- You have done this in a small, fast-moving business before, and you know that means doing more yourself than the job title implies, without it feeling like a demotion
Nice to Have
- AppleScript (legacy, migration away from this)
Why This Role
- Own the end-to-end engineering function at a platform business with a live, differentiated product in a fast-moving market
- Direct access to the CEO and genuine influence over how the engineering and AI capability is built from this point forward
- The AI and MarTech space is moving fast: this is an opportunity to be at the centre of it, building things that matter
- A clear mandate: stable platform, owned roadmap, and AI-driven automation that measurably improves operational efficiency and client outcomes
- Real equity participation in a business with strong growth trajectory
Working Location
London-based, hybrid. Access to our Central London office in Soho. Some travel expected for client engagements and external events.
To apply, send your CV and a short note to careers@createtotally.com
