martin.jarcik.me

I reduce friction and create
more traction.

Engineering leadership is a whack-a-mole game. My experience across engineering, product, and AI and Agile transformations helps me hit the right mole.

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Illustration of Martin Jarcik turning a flywheel to create momentum.
Director-level experience
10 years
In my reporting line
80 ICs
Budget under my management
$10M
Product ARR
$80M

I’m MJ, and I’m stubborn about making an impact.

Thirty years ago, I edited an MS-DOS binary to reverse-engineer it and translate its English commands into Czech. 😀 I got hooked and have worked in IT ever since.

Unlike many engineering leaders, I started my career as a designer, product manager, and entrepreneur, gradually using technology as a way to solve customer problems. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology. But I enjoy solving business problems even more.

A few interesting facts:

  • I spent four years living and working in the UK, including contracting for Google and Alibaba.
  • I’ve worked with teams on every continent except Antarctica.
  • I’ve taken several courses more than once to learn from different trainers’ experiences and perspectives.
  • 15 years ago, I was heavily involved in the Czech agile scene, organizing meetups, conferences, and retreats.

Career

2025–2026

Tricentis

Sr. Engineering Director & Site Lead
Czechia · Poland · US

Turning the
ship around.

Turned around Qtest on every front, from technology and engineering practices to people and business, and rebuilt it for AI-agentic delivery.

Increased delivery throughput
300%
Reduced L2 support MTTR
−35%
Reduced non-COGS
−50%

The wider remit

  • Led a product organisation of approximately 80 ICs and $80M+ ARR.
  • Protected $5M+ in at-risk ARR and increased retention from 80% to 92%, making qTest the company’s lowest-churn product.
  • Made qTest the company’s most secure and cloud-native offering by setting technical direction across scalability, resilience, data isolation and observability.
  • Tripled roadmap delivery throughput and reduced support MTTR by 35% by leading the shift to an AI-native software development lifecycle.
  • Embedded AI from discovery and specification through code review, security, testing, deployment and operations, and deployed autonomous agents to eliminate toil and fix bugs and L2 tickets.
  • Accelerated AI product innovation by creating a startup-like team outside the legacy organisation to move faster and earn Gartner recognition.
  • Cut non-COGS spend by 50% ($500k a year) by adopting ephemeral environments and moving testing from the cloud to local hardware.
  • Reduced release cycles from months to hours by leading an organisation-wide transition to continuous delivery.
  • Shifted engineering from firefighting to systematic root-cause remediation with a dedicated team.
  • Platformised shared data and event infrastructure for use across products and customer integrations.

Role ended in 2026 as part of broader layoffs.

2019–2023

NICE

Engineering Director & Site Lead
Czechia · US · India

From startup scrappy
to enterprise ready.

Bringing an acquired startup up to enterprise standard, without losing its edge.

Scaled product organisation
15→~50
Increased productivity
+25%
Reduced COGS
−50%

The wider remit

  • Scaled the product organisation from 15 to approximately 50 ICs as the business grew from a startup into an enterprise-ready operation.
  • Increased productivity by 25% and retention by 20% while growing the organisation.
  • Cut production infrastructure costs by 50% while improving product availability.
  • Championed AI and machine learning to open up a new product line.
  • Led product and engineering changes that helped earn Gartner and Forrester recognition.
  • Drove FedRAMP, SOC2 and GDPR compliance, translating audit requirements into engineering work and coordinating delivery across functions.
  • Enabled a zero-bug policy by systematically reducing technical debt.
2017–2019

Alibaba

R&D Transformation Lead
United Kingdom · Hong Kong

Rewiring
global R&D.

Rewired a regulated, global payments R&D organization to move at product-company speed.

Stronger engineering performance.

Restructured a 300-person global R&D organisation into autonomous business domains aligned with OKRs, contributing to the successful $700M acquisition of WorldFirst by AntFinance. Coached leaders in building high-performing teams.

Better quality. More predictable delivery.

Introduced DORA metrics and modern engineering practices — DDD, TDD, DevOps and scaled Scrum — to improve delivery quality and predictability. Scaled Communities of Practice globally.

From project management to product management.

Formed outcome-focused teams spanning engineering, product, compliance and marketing, reducing time to market from quarters to months. Trained teams to use data and customer feedback in product decisions.

2013–2015

Underscore

Head of Development
United Kingdom

Beyond
project delivery.

Bringing product thinking, agile practices and a SaaS platform strategy into an agency.

Industry-recognised digital products.

Directed a cross-functional Engineering, IT and Operations team to deliver web and mobile solutions recognised by the industry.

Technology investment tied to growth.

Led business development, customer relationships, vendor partnerships and budgets, aligning technology investments with the agency’s growth goals.

Stronger teams. Greater trust.

Strengthened accountability to improve team performance and make engineering a more trusted partner to the rest of the business.

From projects to a platform.

Introduced a SaaS platform strategy and modern engineering practices, improving delivery efficiency, product quality and long-term maintainability.

2012–2013

Seznam

Engineering Manager & Scrum Master
Czechia

Making a large-scale product
easier to change.

Helping three distributed teams work more predictably on Sklik, Seznam’s advertising service.

Knowledge spread beyond individuals.

Improved the bus factor by helping teams share more of the product and technical knowledge that had previously sat with a few people.

More predictable work across teams.

Strengthened collaboration between distributed teams and facilitated difficult technical discussions around large-scale system problems.

Agile practice beyond one team.

Promoted Agile and XP practices across the company and organised public workshops to share what we were learning.