Engineering Lead

Sarah Smith Fund; Greater London; On-site; GBP 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary + equity

London office

Pension plan

Generous holiday

Relocation & visa support

Job summary

Kernel is seeking an experienced, hands-on engineering leader to own engineering delivery for a high-performing team. You will set technical direction, architect complex systems, and drive velocity while contributing code as needed.

You’ll collaborate closely with Product and scale the organization as we grow. This hands-on leadership role focuses 20% on coding and 80% on guiding a talented team through architectural decisions, product alignment, and deployment at scale in a data-intensive

Qualifications

• 8+ years software engineering experience.
• Proven experience in distributed systems.
• Experience operating autonomously in small, high-velocity environments—startups.
• Experience leading engineering at a company from its earliest stages.
• Experience working with data-focused teams (data/ML).

Responsibilities

• Build, hire, and develop a high-performing engineering team.
• Set technical direction and architecture decisions.
• Lead delivery with emphasis on velocity and quality.
• Collaborate with Product on roadmaps and prioritisation.
• Contribute hands-on coding ~20% of the time.

Skills

Enterprise architecture

Team leadership

Startup scale

Architecting distributed systems

Data-focused engineering

Tools

AWS

NodeJS

TypeScript

Postgres

Kubernetes

ClickHouse

Job description

About Kernel

Agents are starting to sell, buy and operate on behalf of companies. But before an agent can close a deal, qualify an account, route a lead or assess risk, it has to answer a basic question: which company is this?

Today, that answer is messy, and no one answers it reliably. Business identity lives across CRMs, ERPs and third-party datasets full of duplicates, missing parent companies, stale addresses and incorrect enrichment. The cost shows up across the enterprise: sales teams miss revenue opportunities because they lack the right account context; operations teams take on avoidable exposure because risk signals are fragmented or wrong; and finance teams end up chasing, writing off, or defaulting on bad debt that should have been caught earlier.

Humans have worked around that mess for years. Agents cannot. They need a reliable business identity layer they can trust.

Kernel is building that layer: the business registry for agents. We issue a permanent KERN ID for every business, plus the context an agent needs to act on it. Ops, data and revenue teams at Gong, Legora, Mistral, Canva and Checkout already use Kernel on their own systems. Agents are next, and there will be far more of them.

We have raised $20M from top VCs and operators at Plaid, OpenAI, Slack and others, and we are growing 12x YoY.

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.