Head of Applications

Xact Placements Limited; United Kingdom; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A fast-scaling cybersecurity innovator is seeking an ambitious Head of Applications to lead their global Application Technology team. This high-impact leadership role involves driving technical excellence, managing distributed engineering teams, and building SaaS capabilities for enterprise clients. Candidates should have over 10 years of experience and a strong technical background in Node.js and React.js. Competitive compensation and the opportunity for career progression are offered.

Benefits

Competitive compensation & benefits

Endless career progression

Work with cutting-edge technology

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience building and managing distributed engineering teams.
• Proven track record as a global leader, managing local leads.
• Strong technical depth across backend and frontend systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a global application engineering team.
• Build critical SaaS capabilities for enterprise clients.
• Drive a high-performance engineering culture through coaching.

Skills

Distributed engineering team management

Technical leadership

SaaS applications delivery

Node.js

React.js

AWS

Kafka

Tools

Typescript

MySQL

ECS

K8s

Airflow

Serverless

Job description

Overview

Head of Applications | Global Leadership Role | High-Growth Cybersecurity Scale-Up | UK (Hybrid/Remote)

This is an unmissable opportunity to join one of the fastest-scaling cybersecurity innovators on the market. Recognised by Gartner, backed by top-tier VC investors, and trusted by Fortune 500s and critical infrastructure providers, this scale-up is building the future of continuous offensive security. They’re now seeking an ambitious Head of Applications to lead their global Application Technology team across the UK, Singapore, and the US. This is a high-impact leadership role where you’ll shape engineering culture, drive technical excellence, and scale customer-facing SaaS systems used by some of the largest enterprises in the world.

What you’ll be doing

• Leading and growing a global application engineering team, spanning backend and frontend systems
• Building critical SaaS capabilities for enterprise clients: account lifecycle, access control, notifications, logging, multi-tenancy, and more
• Partnering with local leads to ensure global alignment and consistent delivery standards
• Driving a high-performance engineering culture through structured reviews, coaching, and career development pathways
• Partnering with Product Design to deliver intuitive, robust enterprise workflows
• Tackling complex technical challenges across large-scale data pipelines, secure access, event-driven systems, and multi-tenant architectures
• Embedding Agile, DevOps, and best practices into the engineering organisation

What they’re looking for

• 10+ years of experience building and managing distributed engineering teams across multiple regions
• Proven track record as a global leader, managing local leads and scaling high-performing teams
• Experience delivering enterprise-grade SaaS applications in a high-growth B2B environment
• Strong technical depth across:
• Backend: Node.js, Typescript
• Frontend: React.js, Typescript
• Database: MySQL
• Cloud/Infra: AWS, ECS, K8s, Airflow, Kafka, Serverless
• Solid understanding of SaaS fundamentals: onboarding, authentication, SSO, granular authorisation, multi-tenancy
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration, asynchronous tasks, and event-driven architecture
• Ideally, exposure to cybersecurity platforms or large-scale security data systems

Why join?

• Competitive compensation & benefits
• Key leadership role in a high-growth cybersecurity scale-up
• Opportunity to shape global engineering strategy and culture
• Work with cutting-edge technology solving complex, industry-wide challenges
• Endless career progression — growth and internal promotion are core to their DNA

This is a rare chance to lead a global engineering function at a company reshaping how the world’s biggest organisations stay ahead of attackers. If you’re a proven applications leader with SaaS and security experience — this one’s for you.

Apply now — your next big challenge starts here.