Head of Engineering

You will set the engineering vision, lead and scale distributed teams across the UK and India, and drive the technical execution that powers Foodhub's next chapter.\nThis role sits at the intersection of technology, product, and business strategy. You will work directly with the CTO and founding team, and you will be the person who turns ambitious product ideas into reliable, scalable, production-grade systems used by hundreds of thousands of people every day.\n\nKey Responsibilities\nEngineering Leadership & Strategy\nDefine and own Foodhub's engineering strategy, technical roadmap, and architecture vision across all platforms — consumer app, restaurant partner portal, EPOS (Fusion), payments, and data.\nDrive a culture of engineering excellence: clean code, robust testing, CI/CD, observability, and on-call discipline.\nLead the technical due diligence and decision-making for major architectural shifts (e.g., microservices migration, cloud infrastructure, real-time order tracking systems).\nChampion engineering best practices and ensure Foodhub's systems can scale from current volumes to 10x growth.\n\nPeople & Team Building\nLead, mentor, and grow engineering managers and senior engineers across UK and India — currently 250+ employees globally with significant engineering headcount.\nOwn the full engineering hiring pipeline: define roles, assess talent, and build a world-class team.\nCreate clear career progression frameworks and foster a high-ownership, low-hierarchy engineering culture.\nBridge cultural and time-zone differences between our UK and India teams to create one unified, high-performing engineering organisation.\n\nDelivery & Execution\nPartner with Product, Design, and Commercial teams to plan and execute quarterly engineering roadmaps.\nEnsure delivery of high-impact initiatives: new market launches, product verticals (groceries, group ordering, table reservations), and platform performance improvements.\nOwn engineering KPIs: deployment frequency, incident rate, system uptime (99.9%+ target), and time-to-market.\nEstablish robust incident management and post-mortem culture to reduce system downtime and customer impact.\n\nPlatform & Infrastructure\nOversee and evolve Foodhub's core tech stack — web platform, iOS and Android apps, Fusion EPOS software, APIs, and payment integrations.\nDrive cloud infrastructure strategy (AWS), ensuring security, scalability, and cost efficiency.\nLead adoption of AI/ML capabilities: personalised recommendations, demand forecasting, fraud detection, and intelligent delivery routing.\nEnsure GDPR compliance, data security, and PCI-DSS standards across all engineering systems.\n\nStakeholder & Executive Engagement\nAct as the primary engineering voice in the leadership team — translating technical complexity into clear business outcomes.\nRepresent Foodhub engineering externally: conferences, hiring events, and partner/vendor relationships.\n\nWhat You'll Bring\nEssential Experience\n10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4-5 years in senior engineering leadership (Head of Engineering, VP Engineering, or Engineering Director).\nProven track record of leading and scaling distributed engineering teams of 50+ engineers across multiple locations.\nDeep hands-on technical background in backend engineering, distributed systems, and mobile platforms (iOS/Android).\nExperience in a consumer-facing marketplace, e-commerce, food tech, or logistics platform at scale.\nStrong understanding of microservices architecture, cloud-native infrastructure, real-time data pipelines, and API-first design.\nDemonstrated success in hiring, developing, and retaining senior engineering talent.\nStrong commercial instinct — ability to balance engineering quality with speed to market.\n\nHighly Desirable\nExperience working in a challenger/scale-up environment\nFamiliarity with EPOS/POS systems, payment gateway integrations, or restaurant technology.\nExperience leading offshore or near-shore engineering teams, particularly in India.\nHands-on experience with AI/ML product features in consumer apps — recommendation engines, search ranking, dynamic pricing, and personalisation at scale.\nPractical experience integrating and shipping AI-powered features using LLMs (such as Claude, GPT, or Gemini), including prompt engineering, RAG pipelines, and responsible AI deployment in production environments.\nFamiliarity with AI developer tooling and emerging standards such as Model Context Protocol (MCP), AI coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot), and agentic workflows — with the ability to champion their adoption across engineering teams.\nTrack record of driving engineering culture transformation and introducing modern DevOps/engineering practices, including establishing AI-augmented development workflows as a core part of the engineering culture.\n\nWhat Success Looks Like — First 12 Months\n0–3 months: Deep understanding of Foodhub's codebase, infrastructure, team capabilities, and delivery bottlenecks. Trust built with engineering teams in UK and India.\n3–6 months: Clear technical roadmap in place.

Quick wins delivered. Engineering team structure reviewed and optimised. Key hires made.\n6–12 months: Measurable improvement in system reliability, deployment speed, and engineering team satisfaction.

At least one major platform initiative launched (e.g., new market, product vertical, or infrastructure upgrade).