Head of Engineering

About the role

We are on a mission to contribute to a zero-waste future by drastically reducing food waste, fuel consumption, costs, and most importantly, CO₂ emissions in the airline industry. Every role in our company is a direct contributor to this vision - and as a Head of Engineering, you’ll be at the heart of the team that makes it possible.

This role exists because we’ve outgrown a purely founder‑driven engineering setup. As Head of Engineering, your job is to turn a strong group of engineers into a scalable engineering organization. You sit between the Head of Technology (founder team) and the engineering teams and your goal is to build the structures, leadership layers, and delivery discipline required to support continued growth.

Key responsibilities

• Lead and scale the engineering organization with a strong focus on people leadership, organizational structure, and delivery predictability.
• Own engineering delivery at an organizational level, including capacity planning, prioritization, roadmap feasibility, and dependency management across multiple initiatives and projects.
• Directly manage and develop engineering leadership (Tech Leads and QA Leads), and evolve the management and ownership model as the organization grows.
• Work closely with the Head of Technology, Product, and leadership to translate business priorities into clear, realistic engineering plans and trade‑offs.
• Set clear standards together with teams for architecture, quality, reliability, and security, and ensure teams can execute against them independently.
• Be accountable for overall service reliability by ensuring appropriate ownership, escalation paths, and continuous improvement practices are in place.
• Lead hiring, onboarding, performance management, and career development to support sustainable team growth.
• Build and introduce the next layer of engineering capabilities beyond feature teams, including areas such as architecture, security, compliance (e.g. ISO or SOC 2 certification), and platform concerns.
• Strengthen engineering processes, decision‑making, and accountability to reduce reliance on individuals and founders.
• Foster a culture of clarity, ownership, and continuous improvement as the organization scales.

Key competencies

• 8+ years of professional experience in software engineering, including hands-on experience building and operating production web-based systems.
• 4+ years of experience in engineering leadership roles (e.g. Engineering Manager, Head of Engineering, Tech Lead with people management responsibility), with ownership over people, delivery, and planning.
• Strong background in delivery leadership, planning, and prioritization in SaaS or product‑focused environments.
• Experience leading senior engineers or technical leads and helping them grow into broader leadership roles.
• Experience working closely with founders or executive leadership during a scaling phase.
• Financial and headcount planning experience within an engineering organization.
• Strong communication skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Good understanding of security fundamentals and secure software delivery.

Nice-to-have

• Experience in compliance‑minded or regulated environments (e.g. ISO 27001, SOC 2).
• Experience with CI/CD, infrastructure as code, or data platforms.
• Experience with Frontend technologies like Angular and Typescript
• Experience in B2B SaaS, remote‑first teams, or operationally intensive domains.
• Experience with AI tools supporting the SDLC process