Head Of Engineering

Maxwell Bond; Camden Town; On-site; GBP 190,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Descrial seeks a Head of Engineering to lead the next V2 launch and shape a 17-person UK engineering team, with responsibilities spanning architecture, data strategy and enterprise security. The role reports to the Executive Committee and collaborates with Product teams in London and Bengaluru to deliver on ambitious, regulated deployments.

You will drive CI, automated testing, and clear governance around data ownership, access, and audit trails, while guiding a platform built for confidential

Qualifications

• Led engineering teams for 5+ years and ran delivery across multiple locations.
• Owned the architecture of a multi-tenant enterprise platform and explained boundary decisions, trade-offs, and future changes.
• Comfortable across the JVM and Python; leadership valued over tenure in a single framework.
• Defends a platform's security model to regulated buyers.
• Raised a team's engineering standard and demonstrated adoption.
• Shipped LLM or agentic systems into production with evaluation built in from the start.
• Degree in engineering, computer science or related field, or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead hands-on and make the hard technical calls.
• Own the platform end to end and set a technology roadmap across London and Bengaluru.
• Establish CI, automated testing, code review, trunk-based development and deploy-on-merge.

Skills

Leadership

Enterprise architecture

Security management

LLM/agentic systems

Cross-location delivery

Java / JVM

Python

Education

Degree in engineering, CS or related field

Tools

JVM

Python

Job description

We are hiring a Head of Engineering to lead Descrial into its V2 launch in early 2027. Investment firms can buy AI models off the shelf. Descrial exists because trusting one with confidential data and a live deal is harder than it looks.

You will own the architecture and have the authority to change it, lead our engineering organisation in Bengaluru and shape a new 17-person UK engineering team.

About Descrial

Descrial is a startup inside a twenty-year-old company

TresVista has run the analytical work behind private capital since 2006. 2,000 people, 400+ clients including some of the biggest names in the industry, no outside capital and no outside board. That was the first chapter. And we enjoyed getting here!

The next chapter is harder and more interesting

We are moving from services to software, from one firm's workflows to an industry's, and from executing investment decisions to shaping how they get made. Thirty of us in King's Cross, small and senior, with day one founder intensity.

At its fullest expression, Descrial changes how every serious investment firm decides.

The role

As Descrial's senior technical voice, you report to the Executive Committee, which includes TresVista co-founder Sudeep Mishra in London, and work alongside the Heads of Product Management and Product Design. You lead hands‑on and make the hard technical calls.

Your remit

The architecture and data

You own the platform end to end, from the integrations with clients' CRM, portfolio monitoring, ERP and fund administration systems to the data beneath them, and set a technology roadmap you can defend. You draw service boundaries around data ownership and keep the transactional core separate from the AI engine. Schema-first API and event contracts, versioned artefacts and contract tests make those boundaries explicit, so breaking changes surface before release. You build where it sets Descrial apart and buy the rest.

The engineering standard

You set one standard for London and Bengaluru: CI, automated testing, code review, trunk-based development and deploy-on-merge. You make the platform operable through tracing, alerting, incident response and runbooks, and keep risks visible to the Executive Committee.

Enterprise trust

For a platform holding confidential investment data, you own identity, token architecture, permissions, tenant isolation and an audit trail of agent actions. TresVista holds SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001:2022 certification. With TresVista's compliance team, you lead Descrial's readiness for both and prepare for ISO 42001 and the EU AI Act. In client security reviews, you show buyers the isolation holds and name the gaps that remain.

AI quality and economics

You own retrieval, agentic workflows and permission‑aware context. You gate changes to prompts, retrieval and agent behaviour on golden datasets and automated evaluations before release. You make latency, agent‑state durability and token cost visible by tenant and feature, so you can say what a change improves, what it costs and how you would spot a regression.

The organisation

In Bengaluru you lead principal and lead engineers, a solution architect and a QA function. In London you build the team across machine learning, front and back end, cloud and solution architecture and cybersecurity. You hold both locations to one bar and partner with Product Management on feasibility, sequencing and cost.

You decide the sequence and the trade‑offs. In your first year, V2 ships on these foundations against explicit release criteria.

Your experience

• You have led engineering teams for 5+ years, hired strong engineers and run delivery across more than one location.
• You have owned the architecture of a multi‑tenant enterprise platform and can explain your boundary decisions, the trade‑offs you accepted and what you would change.
• You are comfortable across the JVM and Python, and we weigh leadership above years in a single framework.
• You can defend a platform's security model to regulated buyers.
• You have raised a team's engineering standard and can show that engineers adopted it.
• You have shipped LLM or agentic systems into production with evaluation built in from the start.
• You have a degree in engineering, computer science or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Useful to have, none required

• Financial services or another regulated industry, where security diligence can decide whether a customer buys
• LangGraph, MCP and graph‑backed retrieval
• AWS at production scale with Kubernetes and infrastructure as code
• Taking an enterprise platform from pilots to broad deployment
• Daily use of AI coding tools such as Cursor or Claude Code, and a view on where they help

The reality

This will be difficult.

It demands pace and accuracy. We are building autonomous systems inside high‑stakes live businesses, where decisions carry real consequences and impact and waiting for everyone to agree is not always an option.

The systems will sometimes get things wrong. In this phase the London team needs to create the evaluations, visibilities and safeguards that catch mistakes early, reducing them over time and stopping the same failures happening again.

If you want to build the foundations of an enterprise grade technology platform to service a multi‑billion $ serviceable market opportunity, and share in that growth, this is your chance to join us.

In our conversations

We will ask you about three pieces of work:

• An architecture decision with real consequences: your choice, your reasons and the result.
• An engineering standard you raised: how engineers came to adopt it and what improved.
• An AI system you made dependable: how you evaluated it, enforced permissions and detected failures.

Compensation and equity

The all‑inclusive package is typically £190,000-£220,000 a year, depending on experience. We may go beyond this in exceptional cases. Meaningful equity in the venture comes on top.

Practical details

• King's Cross, London. In office (3 to 5 days a week), with colleagues in London and Bengaluru.
• Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
• We aim to finish the process within three weeks. Tell us if you need an adjustment to the interviews.
• Descrial is an equal opportunity employer.