Head of Engineering

Radiant; Greater London; On-site; GBP 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Radiant is redefining AI infrastructure and is building a purpose-built platform for sovereignty, performance, and scale. As Head of Engineering, you will lead a 30-35 engineer team today, growing to 150-200+ as Radiant expands internationally, and partner with Product, Customer, Infrastructure, SRE, and Operations teams.

You will own engineering strategy, delivery, and quality, driving reliable, observable, and production-ready systems while shaping the organisation's growth and evolving

Qualifications

• Significant experience leading and scaling engineering organisations of 20+ engineers through growth phases.
• Experience managing managers and developing senior engineers and technical leaders.
• Proven ability to evolve small teams into multiple aligned, accountable units.

Responsibilities

• Hire and scale the engineering organisation with strong leadership layers across managers and senior engineers.
• Own engineering hiring, performance, and organisational health.
• Design and evolve the organisation as the company scales across teams, sites, and regions.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Execution

Technical judgement

Systems thinking

Operational mindset

Organisational design

Calm leadership

Ownership

Job description

Company Overview:

Radiant is redefining how AI infrastructure is built.

We design and operate AI-native cloud platforms engineered for sovereignty, performance, and scale. Our infrastructure powers GPU-native workloads, multi-tenant control planes, and high-performance AI systems designed for the most demanding environments.

We are not building a generic cloud. We are building purpose-built AI infrastructure — from powered land, to compute, to software.

As we scale, we're building this organisation from the ground up. We're looking for people who'd rather build the playbook than inherit one - who are comfortable doing the work themselves as well as directing others, and who can adapt as fast as our strategy does. This is a startup model: attitude and adaptability matter more to us than years of experience or the size of the team you've previously managed.

What You'll Do

As Head of Engineering, you will lead Radiant's engineering organisation and be accountable for its execution, technical quality, reliability, and scalability.

You'll lead software engineering, platform security engineering, and architecture: an organisation of 30-35 engineers today, growing to 150 to 200+ as Radiant expands internationally. You'll partner closely with Product, the Customer team, Infrastructure, SRE, Operations, the PMO, and the wider technology leadership team.

This is a senior leadership role focused on building a high-performing engineering organisation capable of delivering and operating complex AI infrastructure at scale. You'll stay close to the work through design review.

Key Responsibilities

• Hire and scale the engineering organisation, building a strong leadership layer across Engineering Managers, Principal Engineers, and senior technical leaders.

• Own engineering hiring, performance, leadership development, succession planning, and organisational health.

• Design and evolve the engineering organisation as the company scales across teams, sites, and regions.

• Own the engineering strategy, operating model, and execution in alignment with company and product objectives.

• Translate business priorities into clear technical plans, sequencing, investment decisions, and delivery commitments.

• Establish clear ownership, decision-making, and accountability across engineering teams.

• Drive predictable, high-quality delivery, identifying risk early and intervening where execution drifts.

• Ensure systems are designed and delivered to be production-ready, reliable, observable, maintainable, and supportable.

• Strengthen collaboration with infrastructure, SRE, and operations, including effective handover and incident learning.

• Set and uphold standards across architecture, engineering quality, security, scalability, and operational maturity.

• Own the roadmap jointly with Product: Product owns what is built, and you own how and when.

• Act as the senior escalation point for critical technical, architectural, and delivery decisions, brokering decisions between peers and escalating to the CTO when needed.

• Improve engineering maturity and processes while avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy or loss of delivery momentum.

• Represent engineering in executive and partner discussions, and join customer escalation reviews with the Customer team.

Your Profile

• Significant experience leading and scaling engineering organisations of 20+ engineers through multiple stages of growth.

• Experience managing managers, with a strong track record of hiring and developing Engineering Managers, senior engineers, and technical leaders.

• Proven experience evolving a smaller engineering group into multiple teams with clear ownership, leadership, and consistent delivery.

• Experience designing organisational structures, team boundaries, and operating models for increasing scale and complexity.

• Demonstrated success improving delivery predictability, engineering quality, throughput, and organisational effectiveness.

• Strong technical background across modern software engineering, distributed systems, cloud platforms, or infrastructure-heavy products.

• Experience owning production systems where reliability, observability, scalability, and operational readiness are critical.

• Comfortable working closely with Product, Infrastructure, SRE, Operations, and Commercial teams.

• Experience operating across multiple teams, locations, or time zones.

• Able to communicate technical risk, trade-offs, and opportunity clearly at executive level.

• Experience with cloud or infrastructure platforms, scaled SaaS, AI/ML platforms, or infrastructure-heavy technology businesses is strongly preferred.

How You Work

• You move fast and correct course quickly.

• You challenge openly, then commit.

• You address underperformance within weeks, with clear coaching and firm deadlines.

• You keep process light and standards high.

What You Bring

• Engineering leadership: You build strong teams, strong leaders, and clear accountability.

• Execution: You create predictability and drive complex programmes through to completion.

• Technical judgement: You can guide architecture and challenge senior engineers without becoming a bottleneck.

• Systems thinking: You understand organisations, platforms, and operating models as interconnected systems.

• Operational mindset: You expect engineering output to be reliable, supportable, and production-ready.

• Organisational design: You know when structures, processes, or ownership models need to evolve.

• Calm leadership: You remain decisive under pressure and make clear trade-offs when required.

• Ownership: You take responsibility for engineering outcomes, organisational health, and long-term capability.

Qualities we look for:

• Set the standard: Every single day, you spot opportunities to constructively shake things up

• Inspire the change: There's no blueprint for the future. You'll embrace challenges and change

• You're real and you're true to yourself: We cherish and celebrate diversity so you'll feel right at home whoever you are and whoever you're talking to, you treat everyone the same.

Why should you join us?

What sets us apart is our blend of modern technology, competitive benefits