Head of Engineering (hands on)

Head of Engineering

Location:

San Francisco \| 3 days/week in office

Type:

Full-time \| Permanent

Compensation:

$200K–$250K USD base \+ strong equity \+ full benefits

A fast-growing early-stage startup is building a next-generation SaaS platform focused on helping large enterprises understand and optimize cloud infrastructure spend at scale. They’re hiring a Head of Engineering to lead development of a highly complex, data-intensive product from the ground up.

This is a hands-on leadership role where you’ll sit at the intersection of architecture, product, and execution - owning how the system is built, while actively contributing in code and scaling the team around you. Company size is currently 12, with 4 in engineering.

What You’ll Do

• Define and own the overall system architecture for a data-heavy SaaS platform

• Write code daily and set the engineering pace across the team

• Build and scale a high-performing engineering team from 4 to 10\+

• Design and implement systems that handle large-scale, complex datasets

• Partner closely with product and design to shape technical direction

• Establish engineering best practices across deployment, testing, and velocity

• Make foundational technical decisions that support long-term scalability

What We’re Looking For

• Experience as a Head of Engineering, Director, or senior technical leader in a startup environment

• Proven track record of scaling engineering teams in early-stage companies

• Strong hands-on coding ability — not removed from the code

• Deep experience designing scalable systems and defining architecture

• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and building from scratch

• Strong product instincts and ability to move quickly with ownership

Tech Stack

• Current stack includes Python, React/TypeScript, and modern data infrastructure

• Experience with large-scale data systems, pipelines, and cloud environments (AWS) is highly relevant

• Open to candidates from any language background - fundamentals and system design matter most

Nice to Have

• Experience with data-intensive or analytics-driven products

• Background working with distributed systems or large-scale pipelines

• Familiarity with tools like ClickHouse, Airflow, or similar data platforms

• Prior experience in high-growth or venture-backed startups

Why Join

• True zero-to-one leadership role with full ownership of engineering

• Small, high-caliber team (\~12 people) with strong early traction

• Deep technical challenges across data, scale, and system design

• Opportunity to build and shape the engineering org from the ground up