Founding Engineering Manager (Player-Coach) — Europe

Remote — United Kingdom & Europe | Full-time | Senior
$140,000 – $170,000 + meaningful equity

About the Opportunity

Our client is an early-stage, remote-first company building a next-generation platform that helps organizations ship trusted software faster. Operating at the intersection of cloud-native infrastructure, DevSecOps, and AI-driven automation , the team is tackling complex software delivery challenges for high-stakes environments.

As part of their next growth phase, they are hiring a Founding Engineering Manager to lead and scale a distributed engineering organization while remaining deeply technical.

This is a true player-coach role — ideal for leaders who still enjoy getting hands-on to unblock teams and drive delivery.

The Mission

You will own the health, velocity, and evolution of a remote engineering team spanning backend, frontend, and forward-deployed engineers. Working closely with the CTO, you will translate strategy into execution while building a high-trust, high-performance engineering culture.

What You'll Own

- Lead and scale a high-performing remote engineering team
- Act as a hands-on technical leader when needed to unblock delivery
- Drive predictable, high-quality software delivery in an async-first environment
- Partner with the CTO on roadmap planning and resource forecasting
- Own hiring strategy and close exceptional engineering talent
- Align Core, Frontend, and Forward-Deployed teams into one cohesive system
- Champion adoption of AI and automation to increase engineering throughput
- Protect team focus by translating external priorities into clear execution plans

What We're Looking For

- Senior engineering background with recent hands-on technical depth

- 5+ years of engineering management experience in startup or high-growth environments
- Strong expertise in cloud-native architectures, CI/CD, and API-first systems
- Solid experience with Go (preferred) or adjacent backend languages
- Proven track record hiring and scaling remote engineering teams
- Experience shipping production features end-to-end
- Strong async communication and remote leadership discipline
- Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments

Strong Differentiators

- Background in DevSecOps, developer tooling, or software supply chain security
- Experience with Kubernetes and modern cloud infrastructure
- Open source contributions in cloud-native or security ecosystems
- Experience at companies such as GitLab, Snyk, Grafana Labs, Elastic, Docker, or similar
- Demonstrated success in early-stage or pre-Series A environments

Work Model & Eligibility

- Remote-first role
- Candidates must be based in the UK or Europe for time-zone alignment
- Candidates must have valid work authorization in their country of residence
- Async-first collaboration with occasional schedule flexibility required

Why This Role

- Foundational leadership impact at an early-stage company
- Work at the intersection of cloud-native, DevSecOps, and AI
- Remote-first, high-trust engineering culture
- Meaningful equity with early-stage upside
- High ownership and direct influence on technical direction

If you are a hands-on engineering leader who thrives in early-stage environments and knows how to scale high-performing remote teams while staying technically credible, this opportunity will strongly align with your trajectory.

Qualified candidates are encouraged to apply with their CV or GitHub profile.