Toppan Merrill - Director - Engineering Productivity

About Toppan Merrill:

Toppan Merrill is a global SaaS leader in financial and regulatory compliance solutions, serving the world s most complex and highly regulated industries. We combine cutting-edge technology with deep industry expertise to deliver mission-critical software and services. We are transforming how financial and legal teams collaborate and build trust, and we re looking for leaders to join us on that journey.

Position Summary:

- We seek a highly experienced Director of Engineering Productivity to drive software excellence across our global product engineering organization. This role will serve as a technical and strategic leader, shaping the developer experience, coding standards, software architecture, and engineering tooling across product engineering.

- You will collaborate closely with Engineering, Product, DevOps, and QA teams to create frictionless development environments, enforce high-quality coding practices, and scale engineering operations through best-in-class tools and systems. You will be a change agent and a hands-on technical mentor across globally distributed teams.

Key Responsibilities:

Engineering Standards & Architecture:

- Define and enforce global coding standards, review practices, and software quality benchmarks.

- Partner with Principal and Staff Engineers across teams to drive consistent architectural patterns, scalable systems design, and technical excellence.

- Partner with Enterprise Architects and other senior technical leaders in technical reviews for critical architectural decisions.

Developer Productivity & Experience:

- Design and deliver a cohesive Developer Experience (DevEx) strategy from local development environments to CI/CD pipelines.

- Streamline workflows and productivity using tools such as Jira, Bitbucket, Confluence, and Jellyfish.

- Improve build times, test automation coverage, onboarding experience, and inner development loops.

- Help increase Developer productivity via training and AI coding tools.

- Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to evaluate engineering productivity, quality, and delivery timelines.

- Oversee the creation and maintenance of dashboards and reporting systems to provide visibility into project status and team performance.

Tooling & Process Optimization:

- Own the strategic roadmap for engineering productivity tooling, including evaluation, adoption, and retirement of tools.

- Work closely with Platform Engineering and DevOps to enhance automation, observability, and infrastructure-as-code.

- Evaluate, integrate, and scale tools that drive engineering performance and satisfaction.

Leadership & Influence:

- Act as a technical advisor and productivity champion to engineering teams globally.

- Mentor and guide engineers, tech leads, and managers on engineering best practices.

- Collaborate with executive leadership to set and align engineering productivity KPIs.

- Partner with Engineering managers and HR on developing career framework/development programs for engineering teams

- Develop and implement training programs and workshops to upskill teams on modern technologies and best practices.

Required Qualifications:

- 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 3 years in a staff, principal, or director-level role.

- Proven leadership in large-scale software architecture, engineering operations, or developer platforms.

- Deep hands-on expertise in modern software development practices, CI/CD, cloud-native design, and agile delivery.

- Demonstrated experience improving developer productivity and tooling at scale.

- Familiarity with industry-standard tools: Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, Jellyfish, or similar.

- Strong hands-on experience with one or more major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP), including containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), serverless, and cloud infrastructure automation.

- Familiarity with cloud security best practices and compliance frameworks (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001, etc.) relevant to SaaS platforms.

- Experience leading globally distributed teams or working in a multinational environment.

- Familiarity with modern DevOps and SRE practices.

- Strong communication and influencing skills across executive and technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications:

- Experience in regulated industries (financial services, legal tech, healthcare, etc.).

- Contributions to internal developer portals or productivity platforms.

Why Join Us:

- Be part of a global digital transformation journey.

- Own and drive high-impact initiatives that touch every part of the engineering lifecycle.

- Work with cutting-edge tools and frameworks in a highly collaborative, innovation-driven culture.

- Competitive compensation and benefits in a flexible, hybrid working model.

Success Criteria for Position:

- Engineering Standards & Architecture: Success in this role involves defining and enforcing global coding standards, review practices, and software quality benchmarks

- Partnering with Engineering Managers, Principal and Staff Engineers across teams to drive consistent architectural patterns, scalable systems design, and technical excellence

- Collaborating with Enterprise Architects and other senior technical leaders in technical reviews for critical architectural decisions

- Coach engineers, tech leads, and managers to question assumptions. Teach them to build a viable open architecture that scales

- Developer Productivity & Experience: Designing and delivering a cohesive Developer Experience (DevEx) strategy, streamlining workflows and productivity using tools such as Jira, Bitbucket, Confluence, and Jellyfish

- Improving build times, test automation coverage, onboarding experience, and inner development loops

- Increasing developer productivity via training and AI coding tools

- Defining and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to evaluate engineering productivity, quality, and delivery timelines

- Overseeing the creation and maintenance of dashboards and reporting systems to provide visibility into project status and team performance

- Tooling & Process Optimization: Owning the strategic roadmap for engineering productivity tooling, including evaluation, adoption, and retirement of tools

- Working closely with Platform Engineering and DevOps to enhance automation, observability, and infrastructure-as-code

- Evaluating, integrating, and scaling tools that drive engineering performance and satisfaction

- Leadership & Influence: Acting as a technical advisor and productivity champion to engineering teams globally

- Mentoring and guiding engineers, tech leads, and managers on engineering best practices

- Coach engineers, tech leads, and managers to question assumptions. Teach them to be creative and look at the bigger picture.

- Collaborating with executive leadership to set and align engineering productivity KPIs

- Partnering with Engineering managers and HR on developing career learning plans/development programs for individuals and engineering teams

- Developing and implementing training programs and workshops to upskill teams on modern technologies and best practices

- Establishes and maintains a healthy, trust-based partnership with Product leadership to ensure aligned priorities, shared accountability, and seamless delivery planning between

Engineering and Product teams.