VP of Engineering

Qdrant is the leading open-source Vector Search Engine powering the next generation of AI applications. From semantic search and RAG to recommendation systems and AI agents, Qdrant enables developers and enterprises to build intelligent systems that deliver high performance, scalability, and reliability.

We're looking for an exceptional VP of Engineering to lead and grow our engineering organization at a pivotal moment — post-Series B, as we scale from a beloved open-source tool into the definitive vector search platform for enterprise AI. You will partner directly with our CEO and leadership team to shape technical direction, build an engineering culture, and ship products that developers and enterprises trust for their most critical workloads.

The Role

This role combines technical leadership, organizational scaling, and ownership of product delivery. You will be responsible for building and operating our cloud platform, delivering commercial features, and ensuring enterprise-grade reliability, security, and scalability — while staying deeply aligned with our open-source core.

You will work closely with the executive team, Product, and Go-to-Market functions to translate the company's strategy into engineering execution.

Your Tasks

• Lead and scale a distributed engineering organization across core database infrastructure, cloud platform, and developer experience — owning hiring, culture, and team design
• Partner with the leadership team on product roadmap and architectural decisions, translating company strategy into executable engineering plans
• Drive reliability, performance, and velocity across Qdrant's core engine, Qdrant Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and emerging products like Cloud Inference and Qdrant Edge
• Establish engineering excellence: code quality standards, incident response, observability, and the operational rhythm needed to run a production database at scale
• Work closely with Product, Developer Relations, and Customer Success to ensure engineering efforts are tightly aligned with the needs of Qdrant's developer community and enterprise customers
• Define and own the engineering hiring plan to meet aggressive growth targets, with a focus on Rust, distributed systems, and ML infrastructure talent
• Champion a culture of rigor, ownership, and craft — the kind of culture that builds a custom storage engine from scratch because the off-the-shelf solution isn't fast enough

Experience

• 10+ years in engineering leadership, including senior roles in cloud/platform engineering
• Experience building and scaling B2B SaaS platforms
• Proven track record in managing distributed teams
• Deep experience with Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures
• Experience operating high-scale, production-critical infrastructure
• Experience with enterprise security and compliance frameworks

Technical Depth

• Strong background in distributed systems
• Experience running large-scale infrastructure in AWS/GCP/Azure
• Deep knowledge of observability, reliability engineering, and automation
• Strong understanding of DevOps, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code

Leadership Traits

• Strategic thinker who can also dive deep technically
• Strong decision-making in high-growth, fast-changing environments
• Clear communicator across technical and business stakeholders
• Data-driven and customer-focused

Nice to Have

• Experience with search engines, databases, storage systems, or data infrastructure
• Experience in open-source companies
• Familiarity with AI/ML infrastructure or vector search systems

• Shape the future of AI infrastructure
• Lead cloud strategy at a fast-growing open-source company
• Work with a globally distributed, high-talent engineering team
• Competitive compensation + equity
• Remote-first culture

• Candidates, please submit a short non-AI-generated cover letter and explain why you think you are a great fit for this role.
• It is a remote position, but candidates from Europe will be given preference.
• Recruiters: we accept candidate profiles from external recruiters and headhunters only via 𝗵𝘁𝘁𝗽𝘀://𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗯𝘂𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿.𝗰𝗼𝗺