Role Overview In the run-up to securing Series B funding, Xapien is hiring a Head of Engineering to build and lead a high-performing, scalable engineering organisation. Reporting to Shaun O’Mahony, Co-Founder and CTPO, you’ll own the systems, practices, and culture that enable a ~35-person (and growing) product and engineering organisation to deliver reliably, iterate quickly, and partner effectively across the business. You’ll lead the engineering organisation end-to-end: driving delivery execution, scaling the team, building operational maturity, and championing AI-augmented development practices. You will operate at multiple levels — coaching managers and ICs, owning incident response, and setting the operational direction for Xapien’s engineering organisation. This is a rare opportunity to both build the foundations of a scaling engineering org and directly influence the growth trajectory of an AI-native company.
Drive Sustainable, Agile Delivery● Establish lightweight, agile practices that support fast iterations, predictable delivery, and continuous improvement.● Build delivery management processes (planning, estimation, forecasting) that give product and commercial teams confidence in timelines.● Own QA and testing practices to ensure quality keeps pace with rapid delivery cycles — including release gating through alpha/beta environments, feature flags, and automated regression testing.● Implement engineering metrics and dashboards (e.g., DORA metrics) that provide visibility into delivery velocity, deployment frequency, change failure rates, and team health — reinforcing Xapien’s identity as a data-driven organisation.
Scale the Engineering Organisation● Create career pathways and coaching frameworks that develop strong engineers and future leaders.● Develop a workforce strategy that accounts for AI-augmented development — understanding where agentic tooling can amplify output and where human judgement is essential, to build a right-sized, cost-effective engineering organisation.
Establish engineering-wide standards for code quality, review processes, and technical governance.● Build observability, incident management, and on-call practices that scale with team growth and deployment frequency.● Embed DevOps, MLOps, security, and compliance practices into day-to-day workflows.● Partner with commercial teams to align engineering focus with commercial drivers and business objectives.● Partner with compliance, security, and data protection stakeholders to ensure engineering practices meet regulatory requirements — particularly important given Xapien’s role in handling sensitive due diligence data.● Facilitate clear communication between technical and non-technical stakeholders, contributing to company-wide planning.
Delivery Leadership: 5+ years leading multiple cross-functional engineering teams through significant growth, including experience managing managers and scaling delivery, QA, and testing functions.● Agile Collaboration: Proven experience embedding agile practices, fast iterations, and effective QA/testing processes.● Built or scaled engineering orgs during high-growth early stage phases (Series A/B).● Strong background in cloud-native architectures, distributed systems, and modern delivery practices (CI/CD, automated testing, observability). Experience building observability, on-call rotations, and incident management practices as engineering organisations scale — reducing MTTR and increasing deployment confidence.● Range & Flexibility: Comfortable operating at multiple levels — from directly managing ICs and leading incident response, to defining long-term operational strategy and scaling the organisation. Leadership Qualities: Manager of Managers: Proven ability to build, coach, and empower engineering managers to lead their own teams effectively.● Bonus: Familiarity with AI/ML technologies and their operational requirements, including experience with AI-augmented development workflows.
Agile delivery practices in place, with predictable velocity and clear quality standards.● QA, testing, and delivery management embedded as integral parts of the engineering function.● Effective collaboration processes established with product and commercial teams.● Engineering career framework published and actively used for development conversations.● A self-sustaining, high-performing engineering organisation that delivers at speed and scale.● Product and commercial teams have high confidence in engineering reliability and quality.● Strong engineering culture — with clear career progression, coaching, and an environment that attracts and retains top talent.
At Xapien, engineering isn’t just about building features, it’s about creating the technical foundation that enables the entire business to scale. As Head of Engineering, you’ll be instrumental in ensuring that our technical capabilities grow in step with our business ambitions, while building a team and culture that can sustain high performance over the long term. Every business needs to know who they’re really working with whether it’s suppliers, investors, partners, or third parties. Since 2018, we’ve grown from a deep-tech startup to a global player in AI-driven due diligence and risk intelligence. With new regulations, rising compliance pressure and growing reputation risks, organisations everywhere are demanding smarter, faster ways to work and they’re turning to us. Customers worldwide from global law firms and private banks to universities and nonprofits rely on Xapien to turn days of manual research into trusted insights, delivered in minutes.
Customers in a diverse range of industries, with particular growth in wealth management, financial services and supply chain onboarding. Demand accelerating beyond our UK headquarters, across multiple continents with new customers in the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania.
Whether you’re in marketing, communications, sales, or finance, you’ll play a critical role in driving growth, building credibility, and defining how we connect our product to a rapidly evolving market. We’re scaling fast with more customers, more releases, and bigger regulatory and market challenges. You won’t just be executing campaigns, closing deals, or managing numbers, you’ll be influencing strategy, optimising processes, and helping position a brand that’s setting the new standard for trust and transparency. We are going to work with you – to build a rewarding and fulfilling career with the opportunities, challenges and resources you need to do you your best work. We succeed together- you will own a meaningful part of the business through our employee shares & equity programme. Private health insurance to keep you in tip-top condition. Life Insurance – let’s hope nobody ever needs this! Unlimited holidays – yes, it really is uncapped – take the time you need, when you need it. Everyone is learning, developing and challenging themselves so we have a £1k professional development fund per year if you want to learn new skills, even new things outside of work. Most importantly of all, we will work with you, to help you realise your fullest potential, always….