Head of Engineering

Permanent · Full time · Engineering · Rotageek

Hybrid working · UK based, primarily London, with around two to three days a week in the office

Reports to the CTO

• About Rotageek

Rotageek builds workforce-management software that helps organisations schedule the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

Our product supports enterprise operators across retail, hospitality, distribution and healthcare, managing demand-driven scheduling, time and attendance, leave and labour-cost optimisation across thousands of locations.

We work on complex operational problems where forecasting informs planning, planning drives time tracking, and time tracking feeds payroll. The decisions we make have real consequences for customers, their people and their costs.

Rotageek is part of the ELMO group, with engineering capability across the UK and Australia.

The role

We are looking for a Head of Engineering to own Rotageek engineering end-to-end.

You will lead through an established Squad Leadership layer across product-delivery squads, Intelligence and Insights, data-science optimisation, and platform, DevOps and support. You will turn direction into delivery: setting clear commitments, building the operating rhythm that closes them, and making sure the function reports honestly on its progress.

This is an execution-focused leadership role. We are looking for someone who sets hard dates and hits them, leads with meaningful numbers, holds their position with senior stakeholders, and creates real accountability through their leadership team.

That means building the instrumentation, activation and self-serve capability needed for the next stage of the product, while keeping the commercial organisation fully supported in the sales-led motion that funds the transition.

The engineering organisation is moving towards an AI-native, domain-driven squad model. Squads will own their domains; you will make sure the boundaries are clear, the standards are consistent and the outcomes are delivered.

What you'll do

• Own the Rotageek engineering function, including delivery, operational health, quality, security, cost, capability and headcount.
• Lead and develop the Squad Leadership layer, hiring well, managing performance directly and giving squad leaders the authority to make decisions while holding them accountable for outcomes.
• Establish a delivery cadence that makes commitments, forecasts, risks, dependencies and closure visible across the function. When a date is at risk, surface it early with options.
• Deliver the committed roadmap of customer-facing integrations, product work and platform programmes, including the migration from Azure to AWS.
• Set and enforce the engineering standard across squads: testing, code review, security scanning, release readiness, progressive rollout and rollback, production ownership and on-call.
• Build the operational measurement layer for engineering, covering delivery predictability, cycle time, deployment pace, change failure and recovery, incident and support ageing, escaped defects, quality-gate compliance and cloud cost per tenant.
• Own engineering budget execution across headcount, contractors, vendors, tooling and cloud run-rate, with clear forecasts and managed variances.
• Own the incident and support operating models, including severity classification, escalation, major-incident communication, root-cause reviews, L2/L3 support and action tracking through to closure.
• Set the engineering agenda behind product-led growth: product instrumentation, event models, activation and adoption measurement, expansion signals and self-serve capability.
• Shape domain-driven squads with clear ownership, contracts and interfaces, and resolve the systemic technical problems that repeatedly slow delivery or create customer impact.
• Partner with the CTO, CPO, CRO and wider executive team, bringing evidence-based views on feasibility, capacity, risk, investment and customer value.
• Own the function's security, compliance and risk posture across a multi-tenant estate with UK and Australian data-residency obligations.
• What we're looking for Proven experience owning a multi-squad engineering function's delivery and operational health end-to-end.
• Experience leading through managers or squad leaders, including hiring, coaching, performance management and succession planning.
• A track record of improving the numbers: delivery predictability, quality, cost, incident performance, support ageing or similar operational measures.
• Strong delivery discipline. You set clear commitments, protect capacity for agreed priorities and close loops rather than allowing work to age unnoticed.
• The confidence to create an honest reporting culture and communicate risks early, including upwards.
• Experience shaping or operating domain-driven teams with clear ownership and healthy interfaces between squads.
• Experience putting AI into the way an engineering function works, including practical tooling, adoption, validation and safe-use guardrails.
• Product-led-growth experience, particularly around instrumentation, activation, adoption, expansion or self-serve capability, while maintaining a successful sales-led motion.
• Enough technical depth to contribute confidently to architecture conversations about boundaries, integrations, build versus buy, technical debt, migrations, reliability and cost.
• Experience in workforce management, scheduling, enterprise SaaS, retail, hospitality, healthcare, distribution, SaaS unit economics or cloud-cost management would be a bonus.

How we work

You will work through small, domain-owning squads supported by an established Squad Leadership layer. Product, engineering, QA, data and commercial colleagues work together in a delivery-focused rhythm, with clear ownership and written visibility of decisions, risks and commitments.

We work hybrid, with the role primarily based in London and around one day a week in the office. You will work closely with our Australian engineering capability, using strong async habits and a follow-the-sun DevOps model to make the time-zone difference an advantage rather than a source of friction.

We are building an AI-native SDLC. Claude Code is used across design, build, review and ship, with human oversight of AI-generated code and clear data and IP boundaries. We expect leaders to drive responsible adoption, measure the impact and keep quality and security standards high.

We value clear written thinking, healthy challenge and people who raise problems early. The function should close more than it opens, and the number on the dashboard should be the number people can make decisions from.

Our values

The way we work matters as much as what we ship.

Our values are:

• Start with People – we protect sustainable load, real career progression and the psychological safety to raise bad news early. Holding people to results and looking after them are the same job.
• Clear is Kind – we say the honest thing early, with enough clarity for people to act. Slippage is flagged when it is known, not when it becomes unavoidable.
• Own It, Together – we take responsibility for outcomes, including the gaps nobody else owns, and focus on fixing the system rather than finding someone to blame.

Why join Rotageek?

Own engineering at a genuinely important point in Rotageek's growth and product evolution.

Lead a function-wide shift towards AI-native delivery and domain-driven squads.

Shape the AWS migration, reliability agenda and engineering operating model for an enterprise SaaS platform.

Build the instrumentation and self-serve capability behind a product-led growth motion.

Work on complex product and operational problems with real impact for frontline organisations.

Partner with senior leaders across Rotageek and the wider ELMO group, with a genuine opportunity to influence how the business grows.

Join a culture that values ownership, clarity, customer thinking and continuous improvement.

Why you'll love it here

• Flexible hybrid working, with around two days a week in the London office.
• 25 days' holiday, plus an additional day after three years and your birthday off.
• UK bank holidays and company shutdown days.
• Private medical insurance with enhanced mental health, dental and optical cover through AXA.
• Employee Assistance Programme.
• Life insurance at twice your salary and matched pension contributions up to 5%.
• Two paid volunteer days each year.
• Access to Mintago for financial wellbeing support, discounts and expert advice.
• Retail discount scheme.
• A dog-friendly office and a people-first culture.

Our commitment to inclusive hiring

We are committed to building a company where people feel they belong.

We want to create a community of diverse, aligned people, and we aim to make our hiring process as fair and equitable as possible. We are not looking for people who simply replicate what is already here. We are looking for people who add to our culture.