Head of Product Engineering

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As the Head of Product Engineering, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining our innovative banking products and services. You will lead independent, product-aligned squads of full-stack engineers who build on the shared platform provided by Platform Engineering. Your role is focused on establishing and aligning to a stable organisational and technology baseline, ensuring our engineers are empowered to do more with less and enjoy the process of innovation and delivery.

Requirements

Advocacy for Technology & Product Vision:

• Collaborate closely with the CTO and key stakeholders to co-create and align on a unified technical vision for a shared platform that empowers diverse product engineering teams.
• Be a passionate champion of our technology and product vision, inspiring your teams to undertake and deliver on ambitious projects.

Operational Leadership & Execution:

• Oversee the day-to-day operations of product engineering, ensuring seamless delivery of our current account, savings products, personal loans, and an expanding suite of banking offerings.
• Establish and maintain a stable organisational and technology baseline that enables engineers to build, test, deploy products efficiently while upholding high quality standards.
• Champion, protect and evolve shared engineering culture.
• Maintain and evolve engineering principles and practises in line with Platform engineering.
• Take charge of executing the relevant portions of the long-term technology roadmap, driving critical initiatives from concept to production.

Team Development & Performance Management:

• Manage the performance of team leads, supporting them in managing the performance and growth of their respective squads.
• Align and evolve hiring and organisational plans to meet the evolving needs of the department, ensuring that teams remain agile, innovative, and high performing.
• Cultivate an environment where engineers feel trusted, engaged, and motivated, continuously evolving the department into a top-tier, high-performing organisation.

Strategic Collaboration & Problem Resolution:

• Maintain a deep awareness of major initiatives and challenges across the department to proactively address issues and deliver desired outcomes.
• Collaborate with cross-functional leaders-including product management, platform engineering, data engineering and site reliability engineering-to ensure alignment and integration across all layers of the technology stack.

About You

Strategic & Technical Leadership:

• You have a proven track record in leading product engineering teams, ideally within organisations that leverage independent, product-aligned squads.
• You are skilled at translating high-level strategic vision into actionable plans, ensuring that engineering teams are aligned with broader business objectives.

Operational Excellence:

• Demonstrated experience in managing the day-to-day operations of product engineering, including executing key segments of long-term technology roadmaps.
• Strong performance management skills with a history of developing high-performing teams and cultivating an environment of trust and engagement.

Technical skills:

• Solid technical background in full-stack engineering, with a deep understanding of modern software delivery practices and agile methodologies.
• Experience working within or in collaboration with teams building on a shared platform (combining public cloud, third-party services, and in-house solutions) is highly desirable.

Collaborative & Influential:

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to work effectively with senior stakeholders and influence decision-making at the executive level.
• A proactive problem solver who is well-informed about departmental initiatives and capable of facilitating resolutions that drive success.

Passion for Innovation:

• You are motivated by our technology and product vision, and you have a strong desire to empower teams to deliver big, impactful projects.
• Experience in financial services or banking product development is a plus, although a passion for technology and an aptitude for learning are equally important.

About Our Process

We can be flexible with the structure of our interview process if someone's circumstances or timescales require it but our general structure is:

• CTO - 30 mins
• Engineering Managers - 60 mins
• Staff Engineers - 60 mins
• Exec/founder - 30 mins

Please let us know if you have any specific requirements or need assistance so we can be as accommodating as possible for you.

Benefits

What We Offer

We're constantly evaluating and adding benefits to best support our employee's wellbeing and to help them thrive in and outside of work. The following benefits are what we currently offer:

• 35 total days holiday (25 annual leave, 8 bank holidays, 1 Kroo bank holiday [June 24th], and 1 day off during the week of your birthday)
• 3 personal health days
• An employer-sponsored volunteer programme (up to 4 hours per month supported by our partner Matchable)
• All equipment you need to work remotely effectively, with a MacBook Pro as standard
• Access to our modern, bustling office in Farringdon, Central London.
• Access to our Cycle to Work scheme
• Access to our Electric Car scheme
• An enhanced parental leave policy
• Room to grow and excel within a fast-paced, high growth start-up

Office/remote working

Currently, the majority of Kroo is working fully remotely. Working remotely has changed many of our lives for the better and we are behind continuing the benefits of flexibility once restrictions are lifted. At the same time, we have a beautiful office in Farringdon, which, when used for the right things, can be a useful and powerful tool. Currently we see a blended model of working 1-2 days a week in the office, so candidates that are able to travel in occasionally are the best fit for our current working practices.

Diversity

We are firmly committed to creating and maintaining a diverse and inclusive workplace in which all employees are valued, respected, safe, supported, and listened to without judgement or prejudice. These principles apply to all, regardless of race or ethnicity, age, gender, gender identity or expression, national origin, sexual orientation, mental or physical ability, religion, appearance, political beliefs, educational background, class, and position or tenure within the company. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are central to the direction we take at Kroo, and are considered across all aspects of our business.