Chief Engineering & Data Architect

Macs Adventure; Glasgow; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual leave: 33 days (35 after 5 yrs)

Birthday booster: extra day off on you

Contributory pension

Discounts on Macs Adventure trips

Travel insurance for you and family

Flexible working (home + Glasgow hub 3

Team meetings and retreats

Learning & development support

Wellbeing support

Occasional international travel

Impactful work influencing travel and人

Job summary

Macs Adventure, a scaling tech-enabled travel company, seeks a Head of Engineering & Data in Glasgow. You will own the technical architecture, set standards, coach a small team, and collaborate with trusted partners to deliver scalable, secure solutions.

You’ll lead cross-functional squads, drive AI initiatives, and ensure a lean data platform supports marketing tech and customer products while maintaining resilience and security.

Qualifications

• Experience as a senior engineering leader (Head of Engineering, VP Engineering or similar), comfortable being the most senior technologist in the business.
• A compose-not-build instinct: strong judgement in choosing and integrating third-party platforms.
• A track record with external development partners, including de-risking or replacing a critical system without breaking the business.
• Technical depth – hands-on enough to challenge partners and get into the detail of cloud, integration and data architecture, without needing to write the code yourself.
• Personal ownership of a data platform and BI estate as well as engineering – for us, this is one job, not two.
• The drive to push AI forward across people, processes and product – with measurable results.
• Solid security, compliance and resilience fundamentals.
• A habit of writing things down, and the standing to hold architecture decisions and explain them to leaders, partners and investors alike.
• A coaching style: you build small, senior teams and help people grow, rather than building empires.

Responsibilities

• We work with trusted development partners who build, maintain and support our applications, including the cloud infrastructure behind them.
• Together with our internal specialists, we ensure technology delivers what the business needs.
• As Head of Engineering & Data, you’ll provide technical leadership, set clear standards and guide architecture decisions while coaching your team.
• Lead cross-functional squads with Product, UX and Marketing to solve business problems with technology.
• Strengthen core technology platforms by improving stability and reducing supplier risk gradually.
• Be our architect-of-record: own system map, integration standards and decision log.
• Drive technology selection and integration to connect systems as one product.
• Own our data platform, providing a lean, modern data source for business use and AI needs.
• Set engineering standards with automated testing and consistent ways of working.

Skills

Senior engineering leader

External partners management

Cloud/Data architecture

Coaching and team development

Job description

Macs Adventure, a scaling tech-enabled travel company, seeks a Head of Engineering & Data in Glasgow. You will own the technical architecture, set standards, coach a small team, and collaborate with trusted partners to deliver scalable, secure solutions.

You’ll lead cross-functional squads, drive AI initiatives, and ensure a lean data platform supports marketing tech and customer products while maintaining resilience and security.