Head of Engineering

Posted 3 Days Ago
Be an Early Applicant
Hiring Remotely in San Francisco, CA, USA
Remote or Hybrid
Senior level
Software
The Role
Lead the engineering organization, setting high standards for team velocity, mentoring engineers, making architectural decisions, and enhancing developer experience while ensuring reliability.
Summary Generated by Built In

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.

You might be:

  • 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:
  1. Engineering leadership: You’ve coached and unblocked engineers in high-velocity, high-pressure environments.

  2. Deep technical expertise: You have strong architecture instincts and solid security knowledge, but you’ll cut through complexity to keep shipping.

  3. 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.

  4. Velocity obsession: You believe iteration > perfection, and your instinct is always to get value in front of users as fast as possible.

  5. AI-first: You’re bullish on AI, vibe-coding daily, and always looking for ways to push velocity through AI-assisted workflows.

  6. DevX focus: You obsess over developer experience because you know great tooling = more speed.

  7. 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.

Our tech stack:
  • Primary: TypeScript, React, Node, SQL

  • Frameworks: Express, React-hooks, Redux, RTK, Mantine

  • Infrastructure: Docker, GCP, Kubernetes, Tracing, Prometheus

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.

💜 We believe that to build a product that works for a diverse group of people, we need a diverse team. So, we strongly encourage candidates of all different perspectives, experiences, backgrounds and identities to apply. We’re committed to hiring people regardless of race, religion, colour, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age or disability. And once you join us, we’re committed to building an inclusive, supportive place for you to do the best work of your career.

Skills Required

  • Proven leadership experience in fast-moving startups or scaleups
  • Strong architecture instincts and solid security knowledge
  • Experience taking products from 0 to 1 or through hyper-growth
  • Ability to make architectural and security calls quickly
  • Experience with DevX focus and tooling optimization
Am I A Good Fit?
beta
Get Personalized Job Insights.
Our AI-powered fit analysis compares your resume with a job listing so you know if your skills & experience align.

The Company
HQ: San Francisco, CA
13 Employees

What We Do

Lightdash is an open source BI alternative to Looker, built for analysts on top of the modern data tools they already use and love. Lightdash brings your visual layer together with your data modelling and transformation layer, creating a single source of truth for data metrics for teams.

Similar Jobs

Philo Logo Philo

Head of Data Engineering

Cloud • Digital Media • News + Entertainment • On-Demand
Easy Apply
Remote or Hybrid
San Francisco, CA, USA
165 Employees
200K-275K Annually

Apartment List Logo Apartment List

Head of Engineering

Artificial Intelligence • Consumer Web • Information Technology • Real Estate • Software • PropTech
Remote
United States
240 Employees
255K-350K Annually

BJAK Logo BJAK

Head of Engineering

Artificial Intelligence • Fintech • Software • Financial Services
Remote or Hybrid
United States
253 Employees

Kinetic Trials Logo Kinetic Trials

Head of Engineering

Artificial Intelligence • Healthtech • Software • Pharmaceutical
In-Office or Remote
2 Locations
10 Employees
175K-250K Annually

Similar Companies Hiring

Fairly Even Thumbnail
Hardware • Other • Robotics • Sales • Software • Hospitality
New York, NY
30 Employees
Kepler  Thumbnail
Fintech • Software
New York, New York
6 Employees
Onshore Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Fintech • Software • Financial Services
New York City, NY
100 Employees

Sign up now Access later

Create Free Account

Please log in or sign up to report this job.

Create Free Account