London-based Engineering Leader — Hands-on & Strategy

Kernel; Greater London; On-site; GBP 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

24 days holiday

Office dinner allowance

Work-from-anywhere (2 weeks)

Parental leave

Pension plan

London office equipment

Team events

Founders collaboration

Autonomy and trust

Job summary

Kernel, based in London, is building the business registry for agents and is hiring a player-coach engineering leader. You’ll own engineering delivery for your team end-to-end, spending roughly 20% of your time contributing code and 80% leading the team.

This hands-on leadership role requires shaping technical direction, architecture decisions, and collaborating with Product on roadmap to scale complex systems in a fast-growing startup.

Qualifications

• 8+ years software engineering experience.
• Track record of hiring and developing strong engineers.
• Strong production systems background with scalable projects.
• Proven experience in distributed systems.
• Autonomous in small, high-velocity environments, ideally in a startup.
• Experience working with data-focused teams (data/ML) and shaping data capability.

Responsibilities

• Build, hire, and develop a high-performing engineering team.
• Set technical direction and architecture decisions.
• Collaborate with Product on roadmap and prioritisation.
• Own engineering delivery with emphasis on velocity.
• Write code when needed to stay close to the product.

Skills

8+ years software engineering

Hiring and developing engineers

Production systems

Distributed systems

Autonomous in startups

Data/ML collaboration

Tools

AWS

NodeJS

TypeScript

Postgres

Clickhouse

Kubernetes

NextJS

Tailwind

Job description

Kernel, based in London, is building the business registry for agents and is hiring a player-coach engineering leader. You’ll own engineering delivery for your team end-to-end, spending roughly 20% of your time contributing code and 80% leading the team.

This hands-on leadership role requires shaping technical direction, architecture decisions, and collaborating with Product on roadmap to scale complex systems in a fast-growing startup.