Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering – Early Stage Start-Up – Dublin

€130k–€140k + Equity

Dublin / Hybrid

This could be a really interesting move for someone who has reached Lead Engineer or Technical Lead level and is wondering what comes next.

I’m working with a growing B2B SaaS company in Dublin who are building out their foundational engineering team and looking for their first Head of Engineering.

AND THE PLAN IS FOR THIS PERSON TO BECOME THEIR NEXT CTO!!

So you don’t need to already be a Head of Engineering. They’re very open to someone who has been the technical lead within a team, has started mentoring and influencing other engineers, and now wants to make the jump into broader engineering leadership.

The important bit is that you’re still a strong software engineer.

This is very much a player-coach role. You’ll be involved in architecture, technical decisions, code reviews and solving difficult engineering problems, while gradually taking ownership of hiring, engineering standards, delivery and the wider engineering function.

The platform operates at serious scale in a complex, real-time environment, so experience with distributed systems, high-throughput platforms or other technically demanding products would be particularly relevant.

The environment is modern and cloud-native, with Go and TypeScript featuring heavily, although they’re not looking for someone based purely on an exact technology match. Strong engineering fundamentals matter more.

They’re also very interested in AI-native engineering and how tools like Claude Code can improve the way engineering teams build software. They want someone who is genuinely interested in this rather than simply adding AI tools to an existing process.

A quick note on the interview process

There will be a hands-on pair-programming exercise as part of the interview.

For this part, they’ll ask you to code without Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot or any other AI assistance.

They’re big believers in AI-assisted development and use it themselves, so this isn’t an anti-AI thing at all. They simply want to see that candidates still have it in their fingers and are comfortable working through a coding problem themselves when needed.

Nothing sneaky or ambiguous, you’ll know exactly what to expect going into it.

You could be a good match if you’re currently a Lead Engineer, Technical Lead, Staff/Principal Engineer or hands-on Engineering Manager and feel ready to take ownership of an engineering function.

You don’t need to have done the Head of Engineering job already. You do need to be technically strong, comfortable leading other engineers and genuinely interested in making that next step.