lightdash
lightdash2mo ago
New

Head of Engineering

United KingdomUnited Kingdomfull-timeexecutive
EngineeringEngineering Manager
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Quick Summary

Overview

We’re seeking an exceptional Head of Engineering / Engineering Manager to partner closely with our CTO and lead the next stage of our engineering organisation. We want a deeply technical leader who still loves to build, leads from the front, and thrives in high-velocity, high-ownership environments.

Key Responsibilities

Set the bar for engineering velocity: coaching, mentoring, and unblocking the team every day Make architectural and security calls fast, balancing speed with long-term resilience Build and own best-in-class developer experience - tooling and…

Requirements Summary

You’re a top-tier engineer with proven leadership experience in fast-moving startups or scaleups. You’re comfortable making imperfect decisions quickly, you’ve built products under pressure, and you know that momentum beats perfection.

Technical Tools
dockerexpressgcpkubernetesprometheusreactsqltypescriptmentoring

We’re seeking an exceptional Head of Engineering / Engineering Manager to partner closely with our CTO and lead the next stage of our engineering organisation. We want a deeply technical leader who still loves to build, leads from the front, and thrives in high-velocity, high-ownership environments. Your mission: build the fastest engineering team on the planet.

You’re a top-tier engineer with proven leadership experience in fast-moving startups or scaleups. You’re comfortable making imperfect decisions quickly, you’ve built products under pressure, and you know that momentum beats perfection.

You might be:

  • A seasoned engineer who has already stepped into an Head of Engineering / Engineering Manager role at a venture-backed startup

  • An ex-founder who has built and shipped products under real pressure

  • A startup tech lead who thrives on ownership and bold decisions

  • A pragmatic builder who values time-to-value over “the right way”

  1. Engineering leadership: You’ve coached and unblocked engineers in high-velocity, high-pressure environments.

  2. Deep technical expertise: You have strong architecture instincts and solid security knowledge, but you’ll cut through complexity to keep shipping.

  3. Startup operator mindset: You’ve taken products from 0→1 or through hyper-growth and know how to build systems that evolve with the company.

  4. Velocity obsession: You believe iteration > perfection, and your instinct is always to get value in front of users as fast as possible.

  5. AI-first: You’re bullish on AI, vibe-coding daily, and always looking for ways to push velocity through AI-assisted workflows.

  6. DevX focus: You obsess over developer experience because you know great tooling = more speed.

  7. Execution focus: Monitoring, observability, and performance aren’t “nice to haves”, they’re how you ship fast without breaking trust.

Responsibilities

~1 min read
  • Set the bar for engineering velocity: coaching, mentoring, and unblocking the team every day

  • Make architectural and security calls fast, balancing speed with long-term resilience

  • Build and own best-in-class developer experience - tooling and workflows that eliminate drag

  • Monitor and protect reliability and SLAs, while still moving at startup speed

  • Establish a culture where iteration is celebrated and perfectionism is challenged

  • We build in public. Open source means moving fast with shared context.

  • We challenge problems, not people. No blame, just solutions.

  • We’re highly collaborative. Independent, but we win as a team (and with our community).

  • We bias hard toward impact. We’d rather ship the wrong thing quickly and learn, than waste weeks polishing what nobody needs.

  • Primary: TypeScript, React, Node, SQL

  • Frameworks: Express, React-hooks, Redux, RTK, Mantine

  • Infrastructure: Docker, GCP, Kubernetes, Tracing, Prometheus

While familiarity with our stack is helpful, we value your ability to learn and adapt over specific technical experience.

We’re deliberately looking for ambitious leaders from startups and high-growth companies. If you want predictability, long roadmaps, and “the right way” over speed, this isn’t the role for you.

👉 Research shows that women and underrepresented groups often don’t apply unless they meet 100% of the requirements. Even if you don’t tick every box, if you have startup experience and a hunger for velocity, we’d love to hear from you.

💜 We believe that to build a product that works for a diverse group of people, we need a diverse team. So, we strongly encourage candidates of all different perspectives, experiences, backgrounds and identities to apply. We’re committed to hiring people regardless of race, religion, colour, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age or disability. And once you join us, we’re committed to building an inclusive, supportive place for you to do the best work of your career.

Location & Eligibility

Where is the job
United Kingdom
Hybrid within the country
Who can apply
GB

Listing Details

Posted
February 9, 2026
First seen
May 8, 2026
Last seen
May 8, 2026

Posting Health

Days active
0
Repost count
0
Trust Level
16%
Scored at
May 8, 2026

Signal breakdown

freshnesssource trustcontent trustemployer trust
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lightdashHead of Engineering