Head of Engineering

Xapo seeks an Executive Head of Engineering to lead three product tribes in a regulated, Bitcoin-native banking environment. This fully remote role focuses on delivery predictability, AI adoption, and strict compliance standards.

This executive position reports directly to the CTO and is responsible for scaling the engineering organization across three distinct product tribes: Growth, Payments, and Assets Under Management. Given the highly regulated nature of the business, the role demands rigorous standards to ensure that software defects do not impact customer funds or regulatory standing.

Responsibilities

• Ensure consistent delivery of committed scope by maintaining a 90% target for shipping on agreed dates.
• Define and enforce the end-to-end Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), including code review protocols, retrospectives, and feedback mechanisms.
• Manage Engineering Managers, overseeing their performance, professional growth, hiring processes, and regular one-on-one sessions.
• Govern the deployment pipeline to guarantee that every change automatically generates a regulator-ready audit trail.
• Champion the adoption of AI tools, such as coding assistants and AI-assisted code review, as standard engineering practices.
• Resolve in-sprint blockers and engineer backlog impediments through fast escalation and structured problem-solving.
• Lead the response to production incidents, ensuring timely escalation and facilitating structured post-mortems.
• Own the function-level technical debt roadmap, prioritizing remediation efforts in collaboration with the Solutions Architect.
• Align engineering capacity with committed work to prevent the engineering function from becoming a bottleneck for cross-functional initiatives.
• Implement quality, security, and architecture standards defined by other leadership forums.

Requirements

• Eight or more years in software engineering, including three to four years in leadership roles managing multiple teams.
• Proven track record of owning delivery predictability at a function level without relying on estimate padding.
• Hands-on experience establishing engineering practices, including SDLC definition, code review standards, and change management.
• Strong people leadership skills, with experience in hiring, developing, and performance-managing engineering managers.
• A data-driven perspective on AI-assisted development across the SDLC.
• Solid understanding of backend distributed systems and the demands of regulated, high-stakes environments.
• Comfort with owning engineering metrics such as delivery predictability, cycle time, defect escape rate, and blocker aging.
• Excellent communication skills across both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Prior experience working in a regulated environment, such as fintech, banking, or payments.

Nice to have

• Background in crypto, Bitcoin, custody, or blockchain-adjacent engineering.
• Experience working in a Team Topologies organizational model.
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tooling beyond standard code completion.
• Experience with observability tooling (Coralogix, Datadog, or equivalent) in an incident response context.
• Multi-tribe or multi-squad coordination at function level in a fully remote, globally distributed engineering organisation.
• Contributions to engineering culture externally (writing, talks, or open-source work).
• Experience in mobile-first organisations where iOS and Android are core business products.

What the company offers

• 100% remote work from anywhere in the world.
• Flexible PTO plan and set your own work schedule.
• Yearly budget for individual learning and development goals.

About the company

Xapo is a Bitcoin-native, regulated bank that operates with a high-performance team culture focused on collaboration, learning, and growth. The company requires alignment with its Values and Values-Driven Leadership principles.

• Alignment with Xapo Values and the Xapo Values-Driven Leadership principles is required.
• High-performance team culture focused on collaboration, learning, and growth.