Engineering Leader

The Role

You’ll be a player-coach engineering leader with a spike in technical strategy, you’ll own engineering delivery for your team end-to-end – from developing exceptional engineers to solving some of our most difficult engineering problems & setting technical direction.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You’ll spend roughly 20% of your time contributing code and 80% leading your team, with that ratio shifting as we scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Build, hire, and develop a high-performing engineering team
• Help set technical direction and architecture decisions
• Work with the engineering to tackle some of our most difficult problems
• Own engineering delivery with an emphasis on velocity
• Collaborate closely with Product on roadmap and prioritisation
• Write code when needed so you’ll stay close to the product

The Opportunity

We are in the unique situation that our commercial traction is ahead of our product. You’ll play a leading role in moving towards automation in a way that enables us to rapidly scale with increased complexity and specific customer nuances.

About You

• You have extensive experience in architecting enterprise-level systems, delivering on ambitious product visions, and building world class engineering teams.
• You have worked at high-growth businesses, and might have previously started your own company.
• You are highly analytical, and thinking proactively through the implications of your decisions, but also have high conviction and understand the importance of moving at pace and shipping often.
• You have previously led engineering at a company from its earliest stages, and don’t shy away from the manager role – you know what great looks like, and want to help engineers grow.

Essential Experience

• 8+ years software engineering experience
• Track record of hiring and developing strong engineers
• Strong production systems background – you’ve built and scaled things that matter, and you’ve done something hard and lived to tell the tale
• Proven experience in distributed systems
• Experience operating autonomously in small, high-velocity environments – ideally in a startup
• Experience working in a data-focused company or closely alongside a data engineering/ML team – data is core to what we’re building at Kernel, and you will play a key role in shaping how we grow that capability

Nice-to-Have:

• Scaled an engineering team through a growth phase (5 20+ engineers), or from Series A to Series C
• Technical depth across the stack: NodeJS, Postgres, TypeScript, Kubernetes AI-driven or data-heavy product experience
• Understanding of LLMs (e.g., RAG, prompt engineering, evals)
• CRM data models or workflow automation knowledge
• Hands-on Data Engineering or ML Engineering experience – as data becomes an increasingly large part of what we do, this would be a great asset for us to have

This role may not be for you if you:

• Insist on shipping pixel-perfect code
• Prefer managing from a distance without technical involvement
• Need extensive process and structure before making decisions

This role is definitely not for you:

• If you over-rely on AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code) to the point where you don’t read or understand your own code
• If you on the other hand don’t understand how these tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) can be force multipliers for senior engineers if used correctly
• If you prefer fully remote work
• If you don’t like early-stage startup pace
• If you’re seeking a purely ‘hands-off’ role

Tech Stack

• Backend: AWS, NodeJS, TypeScript, Postgres, Clickhouse, Kubernetes
• Frontend: NextJS, TypeScript, Tailwind

You don’t need to know everything, but you should be comfortable diving into any part of the stack.

What We Offer

We will do our best to offer you a ride of a lifetime. It will not be easy, but it will be thrilling.

• Salary: £130,000 – £170,000 + equity
• 24 days holiday per year + bank holidays
• £450 Monthly Office Dinner Allowance
• 2 weeks work-from-anywhere
• Generous parental leave policy
• Pension plan
• Top-spec equipment and central London office
• Team events and dinners
• Work directly with the founders to scale the systems that power enterprise AI
• High-autonomy, high-trust environment with a small team shipping at pace

Visas & Relocation

We sponsor visas for exceptional candidates and provide relocation support for those moving to London.

Interview Process

Stage 1: Introductory Call (45 minutes)

An introductory conversation covering your professional background and what you’re looking for in your next role.

Stage 2: Hiring Manager Call (30 minutes)

A conversation with Marcus focused on ways of working and team collaboration.

Stage 3: Technical Deep Dive (60 minutes)

An in-depth discussion exploring your architectural thinking and past technical decisions.

Stage 4: Leadership Scenario Interview (60 minutes)

An onsite interview at our London office, where we’ll walk through real challenges you’d likely face in the role.

Final Stage: Founders Interview

A conversation with our co-founders, Anders and Marcus, focused on values alignment and long-term vision.

Upon mutual fit: references and offer stage.

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