Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering

XCM - Horizon

Overview

XCM is building Horizon, a modern customer data platform focused on scalable, integration-heavy data handling. We are looking for a Head of Engineering to create and lead a high-performing engineering function capable of delivering ambitious platform capabilities with speed, quality, and operational excellence.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who combines strong engineering judgement with the ability to build teams, improve delivery capability, and create an exceptional engineering culture.

The role will report to the CTO, who retains ownership of overall technical vision, core platform architecture, and R&D direction, while the Head of Engineering is responsible for building the engineering capability required to execute that vision effectively and at scale.

The successful candidate will play an active role in technical and architectural discussions, while leading engineering execution, operational maturity, delivery capability, developer productivity, and organisational growth.

This is not a traditional enterprise management role, we are a fast growing startup. We are looking for a player-manager who remains close to engineering, understands what great looks like, and can help build a lean, highly capable engineering organisation designed for the next generation of AI-enabled software development.

What You’ll Be Responsible For

Engineering Leadership & Team Building

* Build and lead a high-performing engineering team

* Recruit, mentor, and develop exceptional engineers

* Establish clear engineering standards, expectations, and accountability

* Create an engineering culture focused on ownership, quality, pragmatism, and continuous improvement

* Help shape the future structure and growth of the engineering organisation

* Lead by example through strong technical and operational judgement

* Remain close enough to engineering to contribute directly where required

Delivery & Execution

* Improve engineering execution, predictability, and delivery capability

* Ensure teams can ship high-quality software rapidly and safely

* Build scalable engineering processes appropriate for a growing technology company

* Improve development workflows, testing practices, release processes, and operational maturity

* Work closely with Product and the CTO to align engineering effort with business priorities

* Remove blockers and improve cross-functional execution across the organisation

* Drive continuous improvements in engineering effectiveness and developer productivity

AI-Enabled Engineering

XCM believes advances in generative AI will fundamentally reshape how high-performing engineering organisations operate over the coming years.

We believe small teams of highly capable engineers, equipped with the right tooling and workflows, will be able to deliver dramatically greater impact than traditional engineering organisations of the past.

The Head of Engineering will play a key role in helping shape what this looks like in practice.

This includes:

* Driving adoption of AI-assisted engineering workflows

* Improving developer productivity through tooling and automation

* Exploring AI-assisted approaches to testing, debugging, documentation, operations, and software delivery

* Building engineering processes that maximise leverage from highly capable engineers

* Encouraging experimentation with modern engineering tooling and workflows

* Maintaining strong engineering quality and discipline in AI-assisted development environments

* Helping define the future operating model of engineering at XCM

We are not looking for superficial familiarity with AI tools. We are looking for someone excited by the opportunity to rethink how modern engineering teams operate, and who can present a compelling vision for how that will unfold.

Technical Leadership

* Contribute actively to technical and architectural discussions

* Collaborate closely with the CTO on platform evolution and technical direction

* Provide engineering leadership across cloud-native systems, APIs, integrations, distributed systems, and data-intensive applications

* Help ensure systems are scalable, reliable, maintainable, and operationally mature

* Support strong engineering decision-making across teams

* Help evolve technical standards and engineering practices over time

While the CTO currently retains ownership of overall architectural direction and core platform strategy, the successful candidate is expected to progressively take on broader technical leadership responsibilities as the platform and organisation mature.

What We’re Looking For

Essential Experience

* Significant experience leading software engineering teams in a product or platform environment

* Strong software engineering background with deep technical credibility

* Experience building or scaling engineering capability in a startup or scale-up environment

* Experience improving engineering delivery, operational maturity, and team effectiveness

* Strong understanding of modern cloud-native engineering practices

* Experience with distributed systems, APIs, integrations, and data-intensive platforms

* Strong communication and leadership skills

* Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, evolving environment

* Strong interest in AI-enabled software engineering and developer productivity

Ideal Characteristics

We’re likely to be a strong fit if you:

* Prefer building over bureaucracy

* Care deeply about engineering quality and execution

* Still enjoy being close to technology and delivery

* Lead through judgement and credibility rather than process alone

* Believe small, highly capable teams can outperform much larger organisations

* Have strong opinions on how AI will change software engineering

* Enjoy improving systems, teams, and ways of working

* Balance pragmatism with high standards

* Are excited by ownership, ambiguity, and building capability from the ground up

Technology Environment

Our environment includes areas such as:

* Cloud-native distributed systems

* Event-driven architecture

* APIs and integrations

* Data platforms and analytics systems

* Containerised infrastructure and orchestration

* Modern developer tooling and automation

Technology exposure should include:

* .NET / C#

* Kubernetes

* Kafka and streaming systems

* Clickhouse and analytical platforms

* Python

* React / Typescript and modern frontend tooling

* Infrastructure automation and observability tooling

* Azure

Breadth of engineering judgement is more important than experience with every specific technology.

What Success Looks Like

Over the first 12–24 months, success in this role is likely to include:

* Establishing a strong and scalable engineering organisation

* Recruiting and retaining exceptional engineers

* Delivery of immediate product priorities

* Introducing high-quality engineering standards without excessive process overhead

* Improving operational maturity and platform reliability

* Establishing AI-enabled engineering workflows and tooling

* Building a high-trust, high-performance engineering culture

* Helping XCM scale platform delivery capability without scaling bureaucracy

Why This Role Is Exciting

This is an opportunity to help shape what a modern engineering organisation looks like in an AI-native world and within an exiting and fast growing business.

You’ll join at a stage where foundational platform capabilities are still being built, meaning there is significant opportunity to shape engineering culture, practices, tooling, and team evolution from the ground up.

The role offers substantial scope for growth and increasing technical leadership responsibility over time as the platform and organisation mature.