Head of Engineering

Help build the future of fair hiring in the AI era.

At Arctic Shores, we’re 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. We’ve 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.

About the role

You’ll lead a small, high-calibre team of Software Developers and DevSecOps engineers working on a Scala microservice architecture running on Kubernetes in AWS. It’s built following strict functional design principles, TDD and CI/CD pipelines to automatically deploy to production. You’ll 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, you’ll partner closely with Product, Psychometric Innovation, Professional Services and Support to represent the engineering point of view in all strategy discussions.

If you’re excited by leading a team where you can genuinely shape the future of our platform and how it can evolve to support the business, this could be your role.

Qualifications

• Have a strong JVM background (Scala, Kotlin or Java) particularly using functional programming principles
• Possess a strong testing mindset with experience in TDD and CI/CD practices.
• Are experienced with AWS and infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform).
• Have knowledge of event-driven architecture and API design.
• Feel confident to jump into different aspects of our code base, orient yourself and remove blockers for the team
• Are motivated to coach and develop engineers through regular 1:1s and collaboration
• Think about platform reliability, security, and cost efficiency as much as feature delivery
• Like solving complex problems collaboratively and pragmatically

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

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 you’ll do

• Lead and develop a high-performing engineering team, aligning capacity to the roadmap and closing capability gaps.
• Shape technical direction 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.

Benefits

• 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

Closing date

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

Values

• Make a difference – We can’t change everything. But we can contribute to a world of work that’s 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.

Application Process

• Short application form
• Our task-based assessment (you’ll receive instant feedback)
• “Get to know you” conversations
• Technical test and/or technical interview
• Panel interview, incl. Leadership style questions

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 — we’ll do everything we can to support you.

Compliance

ISO 27001
Cyber Essentials compliant

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