Vice President Research And Development

🚀 Responsibilities & Challenges 

As the VP of R&D at OP Innovate, you will shape and lead the engineering organization across two distinct product lines — one a cloud-native SaaS platform developed in an Agile environment, and the other an on-premise enterprise-grade solution delivered in a structured, milestone-driven model.

This is primarily a leadership role with a strong focus on organizational growth, process discipline, and delivery execution. You’ll serve as a key member of the executive team, ensuring the engineering organization is structured, motivated, and aligned with company strategy.

You will be expected to:

• Define and implement R&D organizational structure, scaling from a lean team to a robust, multi-disciplinary group across development, QA, DevOps, and project ownership.
• Drive operational excellence, introducing frameworks for planning, execution, performance tracking, and interdepartmental alignment.
• Lead and mentor engineering leaders, creating a culture of ownership, accountability, and high performance.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, customer success, and executive leadership to balance innovation with delivery commitments.
• Maintain technical fluency to guide high-level architecture and technical decision-making, but delegate implementation responsibilities to team leads and senior engineers.

• Managing parallel R&D efforts with distinct delivery methodologies (Agile vs. milestone-driven).
• Leading the transition from service-centric to product-centric R&D operations.
• Attracting, retaining, and developing top talent in a competitive cybersecurity market.
• Operating in a hybrid work model, ensuring cohesion and accountability across distributed teams.

• Proven experience leading R&D organizations in a product-focused tech company, ideally within cybersecurity or enterprise software.
• Demonstrated success in managing multi-disciplinary teams across multiple development methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, hybrid).
• Strong strategic and operational leadership skills, with the ability to align engineering efforts with business goals and product priorities.
• Deep understanding of software development lifecycle, including DevOps, CI/CD, QA processes, and secure coding practices — even if not hands-on.
• Experience in building and scaling engineering teams, including hiring, mentoring, and organizational design.
• Excellent project management and delivery oversight skills, with a track record of shipping complex products on time and within scope.
• Strong collaboration and communication abilities, especially in cross-functional settings with product, sales, and customer-facing teams.
• Technical fluency to make informed architectural and tooling decisions, without being the main contributor.
• Experience with hybrid work environments and distributed team management is a plus.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field required; Master’s degree or equivalent executive experience preferred.