Job Title:  Executive Manager | Engineering Foundry & Managed Services | Hyderabad | Engineering as a Service/ O

Associate Director, Engineering

Job Summary:

The Associate Director will provide strategic and technical leadership across multiple engineering teams responsible for Hertz’s core Rental (RAC) and / or Digital/Mobile platforms. This role is accountable for aligning technology initiatives with corporate strategy while driving modernization of mission-critical systems into cloud-native, API-driven, and event-oriented architectures.

The Associate Director will lead managers and senior engineers across backend, frontend, mobile, and QA domains, ensuring cohesive execution across platform capabilities such as reservations, pricing engines, fleet systems, customer profiles, and digital booking journeys.

This role operates at the intersection of engineering, product, and operations, partnering with executive leadership and business stakeholders to define roadmaps, allocate resources, and drive large-scale transformation across global, multi-brand, and franchise environments.

A Day in the Life

In this role, you will lead multiple engineering PODs delivering high-impact platform capabilities across Rental and Digital ecosystems. Your day will involve balancing strategic leadership with execution oversight, ensuring teams are aligned to both long-term architectural goals and near-term delivery commitments.

You will collaborate closely with Product, Architecture, and Operations leaders to evolve systems supporting end-to-end rental workflows, counter operations, customer journeys, and mobile experiences. You will guide teams through complex decisions such as modernizing legacy systems, adopting microservices and event-driven patterns, and optimizing system performance at scale.

A significant part of your day will be spent mentoring engineering leaders, reviewing architectural decisions, resolving cross-team dependencies, and ensuring consistent adoption of best practices across cloud platforms, CI/CD, observability, and security.

You will also engage with executive stakeholders to provide visibility into delivery progress, risks, and investment priorities, while fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement across globally distributed teams.

Key Responsibilities:

·      Define and articulate a long-term technology vision and platform strategy aligned to business growth, operational scalability, and customer experience goals

·      Oversee multiple engineering domains (backend, frontend, mobile, QA, DevOps) ensuring alignment across RAC and/ or Digital platforms

·      Drive large-scale transformation initiatives including:

·      Legacy system modernization

·      Microservices and API adoption

·      Event-driven architecture (e.g., Kafka)

·      Lead organizational design, hiring, and development of Senior Managers, Architects, and Tech Leads

·      Establish governance frameworks for:

·      Architecture standards

·      Security and compliance

·      Engineering quality and performance

·      Partner with Product and business stakeholders to define roadmaps for rental workflows, pricing systems, customer journeys, and mobile platforms

·      Own engineering KPIs including delivery velocity, system reliability, performance SLAs, and cost efficiency

·      Manage budgets, capacity planning, vendor relationships, and resource allocation

·      Foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, and engineering excellence

·      Represent engineering leadership in executive forums, customer discussions, and partner engagements

Required Skills & Qualifications:

·      Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business or related field.

·      15+ years of combined technical and management experience building software and leading engineering organizations.

·      Deep intellectual curiosity about technologies across the stack; breadth of experience in backend, frontend, mobile, QA and DevOps practices.

·      Proven track record of setting strategy, driving execution and delivering complex programs at scale.

·      Exceptional people leadership, coaching and change management skills; demonstrated ability to inspire high performing teams.

·      Expert communication skills with ability to interface credibly at all levels of the business and with external partners.

·      Strong financial acumen and hands-on experience with budgeting, resource planning and P&L management (if applicable).

·      Experience in navigating risk, regulation and compliance environments applicable to technology and data.

·      Commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and ethical engineering practices.