Head of Engineering (AI-First SaaS Platform)
1 day ago
Manchester
Head of Engineering (AI-First SaaS Platform) £95,000 – £130,000 base + equity (EMI) + benefits Location: UK (Hybrid – Office & Remote) Keepnet is an AI-driven SaaS platform experiencing strong, sustained growth, helping organisations manage human cyber risk at scale. With Agentic AI live in production, Keepnet operates autonomous agents that plan, build, localise, and run security awareness and human risk workflows, supported by strong guardrails, deep observability, and human-in-the-loop controls where required. We are looking for a Head of Engineering to scale these production-grade agentic systems, strengthen platform reliability, and lead global engineering teams to deliver a secure, highly reliable, and operationally mature SaaS platform. This role sits at the intersection of AI-first engineering, distributed systems, and customer impact, working closely with the leadership team, customer success, development, DevOps, and security teams to ensure engineering accelerates, rather than blocks, sustainable growth. This is not a maintenance role. This is a build, scale, and lead role. Why This Role Matters You will own the engineering vision and execution of Keepnet’s core platform, operating across the UK, EU, US, UAE, and Canada, supported by distributed offshore and nearshore teams. Your leadership will directly influence platform stability, delivery predictability, the maturity of AI systems in production, and customer trust as the business scales. What’s In It for You • Strategic ownership of the engineering function end-to-end, • EMI-qualified equity with meaningful upside, • An AI-first environment with production-grade agentic systems, • The opportunity to shape engineering at a critical growth stage, • A structured hybrid working model with strong in-office collaboration, • Own and scale the global engineering organisation, including onshore, nearshore, and offshore teams, • Establish clear delivery standards, communication rituals, and accountability models for distributed teams, • Design and evolve a distributed SaaS architecture using Azure, AWS, Cloudflare, Kubernetes, managed databases, queues, and workers, • Maintain the platform with clear ownership, fast remediation, and a strong bias towards preventing recurring production issues, • Champion AI-assisted software engineering, using tools such as Cursor as part of everyday workflows while keeping engineering judgement and accountability with people, • Embed observability-driven reliability, leveraging metrics, tracing, and tools such as Sentry to proactively detect and prevent incidents, • Lead teams building asynchronous, distributed systems using message queues, background workers, and event-driven patterns, • Ensure high standards of engineering quality and maintainability, making pragmatic trade-offs without compromising system integrity, • Work closely with DevOps on CI/CD pipelines, release safety, and infrastructure resilience, • Translate business priorities into clear technical roadmaps and execution plans, • Support leadership with technical analysis, documentation, budgeting, and reporting, • Build a culture of ownership and production accountability across teams, • Hire, mentor, and retain high-performing engineers and engineering leaders globally You will not be expected to do everything yourself. Success in this role will be measured by platform reliability, delivery predictability, team health, and customer impact. What You’ll Bring • Proven experience leading distributed engineering teams, including offshore and nearshore models, • Strong hands-on background with .NET, Python, and JavaScript/TypeScript, • Deep experience with cloud infrastructure (Microsoft Azure, AWS, Cloudflare), • Strong understanding of Agile and Scrum in distributed environments, • Experience with AI-assisted development workflows, • Experience operating multi-region SaaS platforms at scale, • Strong collaboration with DevOps teams and ownership of CI/CD pipelines, • A security-first mindset, building systems that are secure by design (safe APIs, data protection, least-privilege access), • Excellent communication skills across Slack, Microsoft Teams, and in-person settings, • A leadership approach grounded in clarity, ownership, and delivery Life at Keepnet At Keepnet, engineering is a strategic growth engine, not a support function. What you can expect: • Hybrid working with meaningful in-person collaboration, • Global teams and real-world scale, • Annual leave of 25 days, plus one additional day per year of service, • Enhanced parental leave, • Gym support and a cycle-to-work scheme, • EMI-qualified equity, • Monthly team lunches and quarterly offsites, • A culture that supports learning, experimentation, and continuous improvement Why This Role Is Different This role is for someone who: • Enjoys building what others hesitate to own, • Treats distributed teams as a design challenge, not a compromise, • Knows when to move fast and when stability matters more, • Uses observability and judgement to prevent incidents rather than explain them afterwards, • Understands that culture is a system and builds it deliberately If this resonates with how you work, we would like to hear from you.