Head of Engineering - Hybrid

Salary: £100,000 - 115,000 per year

Requirements:

• You might already be a Head of Engineering looking for more autonomy and purpose, or an experienced Engineering Manager or Tech Lead ready for your first Head of role.
• Strong JVM background (Scala, Kotlin or Java), particularly using functional programming principles.
• Strong testing mindset with experience in TDD and CI/CD practices.
• Experience with AWS and infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform).
• Knowledge of event-driven architecture and API design.
• Comfortable jumping into different aspects of the code base, orienting yourself, and removing blockers for the team.
• Motivated to coach and develop engineers through regular 1:1s and collaboration.
• Consider platform reliability, security, and cost efficiency as much as feature delivery.
• Enjoy solving complex problems collaboratively and pragmatically.
• You dont need experience in every tool, but you should feel confident in modern cloud-native, infrastructure-as-code environments.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and develop a high-performing engineering team, aligning capacity to the roadmap and closing capability gaps.
• Shape technical direction by championing best practice, guiding architecture and code quality, and aligning engineering with company strategy.
• Own delivery and reliability, ensuring secure, scalable releases while optimising AWS costs.
• Partner cross-functionally with Product and customer-facing teams to deliver roadmap outcomes and ensure technical excellence.

Technologies:

• AI
• API
• AWS
• Lambda
• OpenSearch
• Ansible
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• DevSecOps
• DevOps
• EC2
• Exposed
• GitLab
• Grafana
• Helm
• Support
• JVM
• Java
• Kanban
• Kotlin
• Kubernetes
• Prometheus
• Puppet
• Python
• React
• Scala
• Security
• Snowflake
• TDD
• Terraform
• TypeScript

More:

Help build the future of fair hiring in the AI era. At Arctic Shores, were creating a world of work where potential matters more than experience. Our market-leading, task-based psychometric assessments help organisations like Amazon, Siemens and Jet2 make fair, evidence-based hiring decisions. Weve doubled ARR year-on-year for the past three years and are looking for a Head of Engineering to lead the next chapter.

The opportunity:
This is a rare chance to lead engineering at a purpose-driven scale-up where technical excellence truly matters. Youll lead a small, high-calibre team of Software Developers and DevSecOps engineers working on a Scala microservice architecture running on Kubernetes in AWS. Its built following strict functional design principles, TDD and CI/CD pipelines to automatically deploy to production. Youll combine people leadership with technical evolution of the platform through guiding team architecture discussions, balancing quality with pragmatism, and ensuring our platform remains secure, scalable, resilient and cost-efficient as we grow. Reporting to the Chief Product & Service Delivery Officer, youll partner closely with Product, Psychometric Innovation, Professional Services and Support to represent the engineering point of view in all strategy discussions.

Our Stack
Languages & Frameworks:
- Scala, Kotlin, Typescript, Python
- Http4s, Http4k, Circe, Cats, Cats-Effect, Doobie, React, Exposed

Testing:
- Specs2, ScalaCheck

Infrastructure & DevOps:
- AWS (EKS, Lambda, RDS/Postgres, DynamoDB, SQS, Kinesis, S3, Cognito, Route53, VPC, EC2)
- Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, Ansible, Puppet
- GitLab CI

Observability & Data:
- Prometheus, Grafana, OpenSearch
- Snowflake

Our Engineering Philosophy:
- We follow functional programming principles.
- We run Kanban and focus on the smallest effort that delivers meaningful impact.
- We practice TDD and maintain comprehensive automated test suites.
- Everything is automated and version-controlled.
- We evolve our ways of working through team retrospectives.
- We favour simple, maintainable architectures over unnecessary complexity.

What youll get at Arctic Shores:
- Competitive salary: £100k-£115k depending on experience.
- Share Options scheme.
- 28 days holiday + public holidays (plus extra for length of service).
- Private medical and mental health cover.
- 2 mental wellbeing days per year.
- Aviva pension (3% employer / 5% employee).
- Hybrid working and core hours flexibility.
- Enhanced parental leave.
- Fertility support.
- Company sick pay.
- Own Days - one day every month dedicated to your development.
- Cycle2Work scheme.
- Length of service awards.
- Central Manchester office location.
- A supportive team and a meaningful mission.

The closing date for applications is Monday 9th March 2026.

Our values:
Make a difference - We cant change everything. But we can contribute to a world of work thats truly fair and inclusive.
Grow together - We invest in our ability, learn from setbacks, and celebrate the people behind our progress.
Explore, always - Curiosity, drive and bravery help us break new ground and rethink how potential is measured.

Applying for the role:
If this role excites you but you dont tick every box - wed still love to hear from you. Our hiring process includes but is not limited to:
- Short application form
- Our task-based assessment (youll receive instant feedback)
- Get to know you conversations
- Technical test and/or technical interview
- Panel interview, including leadership style questions
Were interested in how you think, how you lead, and how you build, not just the logos on your CV.

Using AI in your application:
Feel free to use AI tools to help structure your thinking or prepare but we want to see the real you.

Equal Opportunities:
At Arctic Shores, giving people a fair chance is what we do - and that starts with hiring. We welcome people of any background, gender identification, race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, ability level, age, size, marital status, style, or music taste. If you need adjustments at any stage of the process, let us know - well do everything we can to support you.

Compliance:
ISO 27001
Cyber Essentials compliant

last updated 43 week of 2026