Founding Engineering Manager (Player-Coach) — Europe
Description
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Cross Border Talents
**Remote — United Kingdom & Europe | Full-time | Senior $140,000
- $170,000 + meaningful equity**
Our client is an early-stage, remote-first company building a next-generation platform that helps organizations ship trusted software faster. Operating at the intersection of cloud-native infrastructure, DevSecOps, and AI-driven automation, the team is tackling complex software delivery challenges for high-stakes environments.
As part of their next growth phase, they are hiring a Founding Engineering Manager to lead and scale a distributed engineering organization while remaining deeply technical.
This is a true player-coach role — ideal for leaders who still enjoy getting hands-on to unblock teams and drive delivery.
You will own the health, velocity, and evolution of a remote engineering team spanning backend, frontend, and forward-deployed engineers. Working closely with the CTO, you will translate strategy into execution while building a high-trust, high-performance engineering culture.
Lead and scale a high-performing remote engineering team
Act as a hands-on technical leader when needed to unblock delivery
Drive predictable, high-quality software delivery in an async-first environment
Partner with the CTO on roadmap planning and resource forecasting
Own hiring strategy and close exceptional engineering talent
Align Core, Frontend, and Forward-Deployed teams into one cohesive system
Champion adoption of AI and automation to increase engineering throughput
Protect team focus by translating external priorities into clear execution plans
Senior engineering background with recent hands-on technical depth – 5+ years of engineering management experience in startup or high-growth environments
Strong expertise in cloud-native architectures, CI/CD, and API-first systems
Solid experience with Go (preferred) or adjacent backend languages
Proven track record hiring and scaling remote engineering teams
Experience shipping production features end-to-end
Strong async communication and remote leadership discipline
Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
Background in DevSecOps, developer tooling, or software supply chain security
Experience with Kubernetes and modern cloud infrastructure
Open source contributions in cloud-native or security ecosystems
Experience at companies such as GitLab, Snyk, Grafana Labs, Elastic, Docker, or similar
Demonstrated success in early-stage or pre-Series A environments
Remote-first role
Candidates must be based in the UK or Europe for time-zone alignment
Candidates must have valid work authorization in their country of residence
Async-first collaboration with occasional schedule flexibility required
Foundational leadership impact at an early-stage company
Work at the intersection of cloud-native, DevSecOps, and AI
Remote-first, high-trust engineering culture
Meaningful equity with early-stage upside
High ownership and direct influence on technical direction
If you are a hands-on engineering leader who thrives in early-stage environments and knows how to scale high-performing remote teams while staying technically credible, this opportunity will strongly align with your trajectory.
Qualified candidates are encouraged to apply with their CV or GitHub profile.