Founding Engineering Manager — Europe

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

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.

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