Head of Engineering

Reports To: CPTO

Job Level: Manager

Location: London/Hybrid

Role Type: Full-Time, Permanent

Role Purpose

You are accountable for scaling Lunio's engineering function to support our next stage of growth. You build the operating model, set technical and organisational direction, and develop the managers and senior ICs who deliver innovative and reliable systems and predictable customer value.

Key Responsibilities

Set engineering direction and standards: translate company goals into a clear technical roadmap, architectural direction, and operating model. Define practical standards for architecture, quality, security, and operations.

Scale the engineering organisation: build team structures, frameworks, and management rhythms that let Engineering grow without losing pace or quality.

Drive pace, delivery, and reliability: improve delivery predictability, surface risks early, resolve dependencies.

Create a culture of innovation: maintain a builder mindset across Engineering, encouraging pragmatic experimentation and fast learning.

Partner for customer and business outcomes: work closely with Product, Data Science, and Commercial teams to ensure shipped work is adopted and drives customer value.

Own infrastructure, security, and compliance readiness: ensure cloud infrastructure, access controls, compliance evidence, secure developer environments, and production practices are documented, audited, and continuously improved.

Skills

Strategy & Architecture – Sets direction through clear trade-offs, architecture reviews, and standards that improve reliability, innovation and delivery speed.

Organisational Leadership – Designs team structures, escalation paths, and planning rhythms that reduce dependency drag and scale with business priorities.

People Management – Runs consistent 1:1s, feedback and development plans. Raises the bar while remaining specific and evidence-based.

Operational Excellence – Uses delivery, quality, reliability, and incident metrics to improve forecasting, sustain pace, and make trade-offs visible.

Cross-Functional Alignment – Partners with Product, Data Science, and Commercial to sequence work, test assumptions early, and drive business outcomes.

Behaviours

Autonomy – Operates independently at organisation scope. Sets direction, allocates resources, holds others accountable, and follows through when delivery or performance gaps emerge.

Complexity – Simplifies architectural, operational, and organisational ambiguity into clear, executable focus.

Influence – Shapes pragmatic engineering practices that are adopted across squads. Resolves conflict directly and escalates when trade-offs need a senior decision rather than waiting for consensus.

Growth Mindset – Seeks feedback on their own decisions, including from their direct reports. Treats every miss as a system improvement opportunity.

Success Metrics

Strategic Delivery - Company-level initiatives have named owners, visible milestones, explicit risks, and agreed trade-offs. Commitments are met or updated early with credible recovery plans. Shipped work shows measurable customer or business value.

People & Leadership Growth - Regrettable attrition in engineering is below 10%. Every direct report (and their reports) has clear role expectations, a current development plan and a regular 1:1 with their manager. Promotion and performance decisions across the function are calibrated against a documented framework.

Reliability & Quality - Uptime exceeds 99.5%. Severity and repeat incidents trend down. Post-incident actions are completed on time.

Organisational Health - Teams have clear ownership, fewer recurring blockers, reduced dependency churn, and adopted engineering standards.

What this role is not

This is not a coding role. Your primary impact comes from coaching, standards, and system-level improvement. Occasional hands-on technical work is welcomed where it accelerates a decision or de-risks an approach.

This is not a steady-state role inheriting a mature operating model. You will build the rhythm, the standards, and the management practices.

This is not a role for someone who wants to focus on one area. Scope spans engineering, support, compliance, and cross-functional delivery.

This is not a role with authority over Product or Data Science. They are peers reporting to the CPTO. You sequence work through partnership.