Head of Engineering New London

CarbonChain; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

28 days annual leave

£500 home office setup allowance

£1,000 annual learning allowance

Company pension incl. salary sacrifice

Generous parental leave policy

Weekly team lunches

Office gym

Cycle to work scheme

Remote work contribution of £1,000

Job summary

CarbonChain is seeking a Head of Engineering to steer our platform direction and engineering culture. You will own technical strategy, architecture, quality standards, and the delivery process, while building and growing a high-performing team.

The role emphasizes leadership over coding, with deep technical credibility to challenge designs and guide enterprise-facing discussions. You'll balance speed and quality in a data‑driven climate tech domain, shape AI adoption across engineering and the

Qualifications

• Extensive experience leading software engineering teams, preferably in SaaS or scaling startups.
• Strong technical foundation in modern web apps and distributed systems.
• Proven track record hiring, coaching, and retaining engineers.
• Experience maturing engineering processes (delivery planning, QA, code review, incident management).
• Sound judgement on speed, quality, and long-term maintainability.
• Excellent collaboration with founders, product and commercial teams.
• Strong communication, able to explain complex topics to enterprise customers.
• Hands-on experience driving AI adoption in engineering.

Responsibilities

• Own technical strategy and decision-making; set direction for platform and architecture.
• Steer architectural decisions across ingestion, provenance tracking, and data sharing workflows.
• Build, coach, and grow the engineering team; manage hiring and performance.
• Define QA strategy, testing approaches, and code review practices.
• Develop and maintain an engineering process playbook; evolve with the team.
• Balance priorities with Product, Sales, Customer Success, and Carbon Team.
• Lead AI adoption in engineering, tooling, and workflows.
• Represent technology to enterprise customers and assist security/compliance talks.
• Partner on headcount planning, budget, tooling, and infrastructure costs.
• Foster ownership, pragmatism, and customer focus amidst ambiguity.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Distributed systems

Python & TypeScript

Cloud architecture

Hiring & mentoring

AI adoption

Tools

Python

TypeScript

Terraform

CI/CD

Job description

Our Product

We help the world's largest commodity producers and traders measure and cut emissions, with verified primary data where we can get it and defensible defaults where we cannot. The platform turns operational and supplier files into decision-grade carbon and compliance insight: sourcing, CBAM, product and corporate footprints, reporting customers and regulators will stand behind.

We organise carbon accounting around the user in four contexts at once:

• Immediate: the tools in front of them
• Internal: how they work with colleagues
• External: how they work with suppliers and customers
• Societal: how they work with society, governments, and disclosing bodies

The data we hold is only useful if it makes all four of those jobs easier.

Head of Engineering

About the Role

We’re looking for a Head of Engineering to lead our engineering team through its next stage of growth. Reporting to CEO, you’ll own how we build: our technical direction, architecture, quality standards, delivery process, and, most importantly, the team itself.

This is a leadership role rather than a hands-on coding one. Your impact will come through the decisions you steer, the standards you set, and the engineers you hire and grow. You’ll still need deep technical credibility to challenge designs, weigh trade-offs, and earn the trust of engineers and customers alike.

As a startup, we move fast and make pragmatic decisions. You’ll balance speed with quality in a domain where data accuracy, auditability, and trust are non-negotiable. You’ll also act as the voice of technology across the business and with our customers, and help shape how CarbonChain uses AI, both in engineering and across the company.

What You’ll Do

• Own technical strategy and decision-making: set the direction for our platform, make and document key technical decisions, and keep engineering aligned with company goals as they evolve
• Steer architectural decisions across our system, from ingestion pipelines and provenance tracking to CBAM data sharing workflows, so that what we build is scalable, reliable, and audit-ready
• Build, coach, and nurture the team through hiring, onboarding, regular 1:1s, career development, and performance management, creating an environment where engineers do their best work and want to stay
• Own quality across engineering by defining our QA strategy, testing approach, and code review practices. You won’t review every PR, but you’ll make sure reviews are consistent, effective, and uphold our standards
• Build and maintain an engineering process playbook covering how we plan, scope, ship, handle incidents, and learn from retrospectives, and mature it as the team grows without adding unnecessary bureaucracy
• Make sure priorities are well maintained and balanced by working with Product, Sales, Customer Success, and the Carbon Team to agree trade-offs between new features, technical debt, reliability, and customer commitments
• Lead AI adoption in the engineering team, through AI-assisted development, tooling, and workflows, and across the wider business, identifying high-value opportunities and setting sensible guardrails given the sensitivity of customer data
• Act as the face of technology at CarbonChain: join client calls where needed, explain our architecture and data handling to enterprise customers, and support security and procurement conversations
• Partner with the leadership team on headcount planning, engineering budget, tooling, and infrastructure costs
• Champion a culture of ownership, pragmatism, and customer focus, staying comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities while keeping the long-term picture in mind

What We’re Looking For

• Extensive experience in software engineering, including significant exposure leading engineering teams, ideally at a scaling startup or SaaS company
• A strong technical foundation in modern web applications and distributed systems, with enough fluency in Python, TypeScript, cloud architecture, IaC/Terraform, and CI/CD to steer decisions confidently without writing production code yourself
• A proven track record of hiring, coaching, and retaining engineers, and of building healthy, high‑performing team cultures
• Experience introducing and maturing engineering processes such as delivery planning, QA, code review, and incident management in a growing team
• Sound, pragmatic judgement on trade-offs between speed, quality, and long‑term maintainability
• Strong collaboration skills: you work closely with the Founders, Product and Commercial teams to shape priorities, advise on feasibility, and make decisions together
• Excellent communication skills, including explaining complex technical topics to non-technical colleagues and being credible and confident in front of enterprise customers
• Hands‑on experience driving AI adoption in engineering teams, and curiosity about how AI can improve the wider business
• Bonus: experience with data‑intensive systems, particularly where data quality, lineage, or auditability matter
• Bonus: understanding of security and compliance frameworks such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001
• Bonus: experience in climate tech or sustainability

How We Work

As a hybrid co-located team, we’re inspired by our values and anchored in hubs across the UK and US. This role would be located 3d/week in our London LABS Camden office space. You will need the right to work in the UK.

What we offer

Meaningful impact and accelerated growth

This is a rare opportunity to work on technology that directly addresses the climate crisis while shaping the future of a fast‑growing company. You'll take the lead on engineering strategy, roadmap and team evolution.

You'll tackle diverse challenges, work across the full stack of problems (technical and otherwise), and own meaningful projects from start to finish. If you want to learn quickly, take on real responsibility, and see the direct results of your work, this is the place to do it.

Competitive salary and benefits:

• 28 days annual leave
• £500 home office setup allowance
• £1,000 annual learning allowance
• Company pension incl. salary sacrifice options
• Generous parental leave policy
• Weekly team lunches in the office
• Office gym, and cycle to work scheme
• Remote work contribution of £1,000 towards expenses for working abroad

Equal Opportunity Employer

CarbonChain is dedicated to creating an equitable, inclusive, and supportive work environment that brings people together from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Our strength is in our differences. We're proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are proud to welcome all applicants as we're committed to promoting a culture of opportunity for all.

CarbonChain values diversity and inclusion and welcomes applications from candidates with diverse backgrounds.