Head of Engineering

Lightdash; Greater London; On-site; GBP 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Lightdash is seeking an exceptional Head of Engineering / Engineering Manager to partner with our CTO and lead the next stage of our engineering organization.

You will be a deeply technical leader who loves to build, leads from the front, and thrives in high-velocity, high-ownership environments. You will help build the fastest engineering team on the planet, balancing speed with robustness and security.

Qualifications

• Seasoned engineer with leadership experience in fast-moving startups or scaleups.
• Proven ability to make quick decisions under pressure and ship under real constraints.
• Experience as Head of Engineering or Engineering Manager in venture-backed startups or former founder.
• Ability to balance speed with long-term resilience and high ownership.

Responsibilities

• Set the bar for engineering velocity through coaching, mentoring, and unblocking the team daily.
• Make architectural and security calls fast, balancing speed with resilience.
• Build and own best-in-class developer experience, tooling, and workflows to reduce drag.
• Monitor reliability and SLAs while maintaining startup speed.
• Foster a culture of iteration and value delivery over perfection.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Architecture instincts

Security knowledge

Velocity obsession

AI-first

DevX focus

Execution focus

Startup operator mindset

Tools

TypeScript

React

Node.js

SQL

Job description

We’re seeking an exceptional Head of Engineering / Engineering Manager to partner closely with our CTO and lead the next stage of our engineering organisation. We want a deeply technical leader who still loves to build, leads from the front, and thrives in high-velocity, high-ownership environments. Your mission: build the fastest engineering team on the planet.

Who you are

You’re a top-tier engineer with proven leadership experience in fast-moving startups or scaleups. You’re comfortable making imperfect decisions quickly, you’ve built products under pressure, and you know that momentum beats perfection.

• A seasoned engineer who has already stepped into an Head of Engineering / Engineering Manager role at a venture-backed startup
• An ex-founder who has built and shipped products under real pressure
• A startup tech lead who thrives on ownership and bold decisions
• A pragmatic builder who values time-to-value over “the right way”

What makes you perfect for this role

• Engineering leadership: You’ve coached and unblocked engineers in high-velocity, high-pressure environments.
• Deep technical expertise: You have strong architecture instincts and solid security knowledge, but you’ll cut through complexity to keep shipping.
• Startup operator mindset: You’ve taken products from 0→1 or through hyper-growth and know how to build systems that evolve with the company.
• Velocity obsession: You believe iteration > perfection, and your instinct is always to get value in front of users as fast as possible.
• AI-first: You’re bullish on AI, vibe-coding daily, and always looking for ways to push velocity through AI-assisted workflows.
• DevX focus: You obsess over developer experience because you know great tooling = more speed.
• Execution focus: Monitoring, observability, and performance aren’t “nice to haves”, they’re how you ship fast without breaking trust.

What you'll do

• Set the bar for engineering velocity: coaching, mentoring, and unblocking the team every day
• Make architectural and security calls fast, balancing speed with long‑term resilience
• Build and own best-in-class developer experience – tooling and workflows that eliminate drag
• Monitor and protect reliability and SLAs, while still moving at startup speed
• Establish a culture where iteration is celebrated and perfectionism is challenged

How we work at Lightdash

• We build in public. Open source means moving fast with shared context.
• We challenge problems, not people. No blame, just solutions.
• We’re highly collaborative. Independent, but we win as a team (and with our community).
• We bias hard toward impact. We’d rather ship the wrong thing quickly and learn, than waste weeks polishing what nobody needs.
• Primary: TypeScript, React, Node, SQL

While familiarity with our stack is helpful, we value your ability to learn and adapt over specific technical experience.

We’re deliberately looking for ambitious leaders from startups and high‑growth companies. If you want predictability, long roadmaps, and “the right way” over speed, this isn’t the role for you.

Research shows that women and underrepresented groups often don’t apply unless they meet 100% of the requirements. Even if you don’t tick every box, if you have startup experience and a hunger for velocity, we’d love to hear from you.