VP R&D

Appcharge is a leading direct-to-consumer platform for app publishers. We help publishers sell digital goods directly to their users - bypassing traditional app store commissions and owning the full payment and commerce experience. The result: higher margins, better flexibility, and a more direct relationship with end users. Backed by $89M from leading investors and operators, we’ve grown 14x in the past year and now process over a billion dollars annually. We’re building the infrastructure that lets modern app businesses take back control of monetization – at scale.

We are seeking an entrepreneurial, business-driven VP R&D to own, scale, and lead our rapidly growing engineering organization. As a key member of our executive team, you will drive our technology strategy and ensure the flawless delivery of our high-scale, mission-critical platform.

You will be responsible for fostering a culture of engineering excellence, ownership, and continuous delivery while partnering closely with Product and Business leadership to achieve our ambitious goals.

Responsibilities:

• Lead & Scale: Manage, mentor, and scale a high-performing engineering organization, including managing Directors, R&D Managers, and individual contributors across Backend, Frontend, DevOps, and QA.
• Technical Vision: Drive the company’s technology strategy and architecture to support massive scale, high availability, and future business needs.
• Execution & Delivery: Own the end-to-end engineering delivery process. Ensure high-quality, predictable, and timely release of products in a fast-paced environment.
• Engineering Culture: Cultivate a strong culture of ownership, innovation, transparency, and engineering best practices.
• Talent Acquisition: Attract, hire, and retain top-tier engineering talent to support our hyper-growth.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with the VP Product, CEO, and other executive stakeholders to align the engineering roadmap with business objectives and product vision.
• Operational Excellence: Oversee cloud infrastructure (AWS), system performance, security, and production monitoring to ensure operational excellence for a platform processing billions of dollars.

• 12+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 8+ years in senior R&D leadership roles at high-growth tech companies.
• Proven track record of managing managers and scaling engineering organizations from dozens to hundreds of engineers.
• Deep technical background and hands-on experience (in the past) with building large-scale, highly available, distributed systems and microservice architectures.
• Strong familiarity with our tech stack ecosystem (Node.js/TypeScript, AWS, NoSQL, Kubernetes, Event-driven architecture).
• Demonstrated experience in hyper-growth startups (B2B SaaS, FinTech, or Gaming infrastructure is a massive advantage).
• Exceptional leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to inspire teams and communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Strategic thinker with a strong business acumen and a "get-things-done" startup mentality.
• Experience dealing with high-volume transactional systems or payment processing platforms - a strong advantage.