Head of Engineering

Katapult Labs

13d•Remote

About The Position

The opportunity Katapult is starting its next chapter, and we're hiring the technical leader to build it with us. You'll set and protect the technical bar across everything we ship. You start with the Head of Engineering mantle: the most senior technical voice at Katapult, owning architecture, delivery quality, our engineering culture, and how our people grow. Deliver at the level we're betting on, and this role opens into CTO / Technical Co-Founder: a true plus-one to the founder across technology, delivery, and (over time) the commercial side of the business. This isn't a seat you run from a slide deck. You're a strategist who drops into delivery mode the second it matters. Lead an architecture review. Design the first cut of a new system. Join the strike team to stabilize a critical engagement. Prototype the thing that gets a business shipping value sooner. You set direction, and you build. What you'll own Technical leadership and architecture (the heart of the role). You own the technical bar across web, backend, data, mobile, cloud, infrastructure, and security. You make the hard architecture calls, lead the reviews, and design the foundations of new projects. You bring the minimum effective dosage of technology to every problem: enough to ship value and start the flywheel, never more than the moment needs. Engineering org, culture, and talent. You grow our engineering organization the modern way: horizontal, high-trust, outcome-driven, not stacked with management layers. You set the hiring bar, define how we level builders, and shape the culture, incentives, and processes that make strong engineers want to do their best work here. AI harness engineering as a core discipline. You treat the harness as real engineering: the scaffolding, tools, context, memory, evals, and guardrails that wrap a model and turn it into something production-grade. You set the judgment for where AI speeds us up and where it quietly drops the quality bar, and you coach the team to build at that level (the harness, not just the prompts). Delivery and the strike team. When a new engagement needs the best of the best to stabilize it or set the right foundation, you're on the strike team. You roll up your sleeves on prototypes, early product builds, architecture, and the hard first 20%. Then you hand off clean to the squad that runs with it. Partner and commercial partnership (grows with the role). You work directly with founders and C-level stakeholders, with the presence to represent Katapult at the highest level. When technical weight helps win or shape the right work, you step into the sales motion. How we work We build horizontal, high-ownership teams with the right culture, processes, and delivery discipline. Not management layers for their own sake. We ship the minimum effective dosage of technology to create value fast, then compound it. AI-assisted engineering is part of the default toolkit, not a side experiment. The trajectory You step in as Head of Engineering. As you prove the technical leadership, judgment, and impact we're betting on, the path opens to CTO / Technical Co-Founder, with the scope, ownership, and standing that title carries at Katapult. Who you are You've been the CTO of a startup, or the deeply technical half of a founding team, and you're very technical. You've been around the block on the pillars that matter: architecture, technology, delivery, security, infrastructure, the full stack. You can lead the room and write the code. You're at the point where you've already led teams and stabilized how you work, and you're looking for a long-term home instead of your next gig. You want ownership of an outcome, and you're ready to plant a flag.

Requirements

10+ years building production software, several of them leading and growing engineering teams.
Impeccable, advanced English.
Deep architecture experience across cloud (AWS / GCP), infrastructure, microservices, event-driven systems, and API design (REST / gRPC).
Strong full-stack breadth: modern web (React, Next.js, TypeScript/JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and backend (Node, Python, Go, or similar).
Hands-on with AI coding tools and agent harnesses (Claude Code, Codex CLI, and the like).
Solid grounding in data and analytics: pipelines and data-driven products.
Security baked in to how you architect and review.
Working knowledge of mobile delivery.
Real frontend taste and product sense.
A track record of scaling systems and improving reliability and quality at meaningful volume.
Experience working remotely with US-based startups and founders, with high autonomy and strong execution.

Nice To Haves

ML / data engineering depth: recommender systems, search, or large-scale data pipelines.
Time in a nearshore, agency, or multi-client studio environment.
Kubernetes and modern observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Sentry).
Exposure to high-availability or regulated domains (fintech, insurtech, proptech).
Pre-sales or commercial experience.
Founder or technical co-founder experience.

Responsibilities

Own the technical bar across web, backend, data, mobile, cloud, infrastructure, and security.
Make hard architecture calls, lead reviews, and design foundations of new projects.
Grow the engineering organization in a modern way: horizontal, high-trust, outcome-driven.
Set the hiring bar, define how builders are leveled, and shape culture, incentives, and processes.
Treat AI harness engineering as a core discipline, including scaffolding, tools, context, memory, evals, and guardrails.
Set judgment for where AI speeds up development and where it impacts quality.
Join the strike team to stabilize new engagements or set the right foundation.
Roll up sleeves on prototypes, early product builds, architecture, and the hard first 20%.
Work directly with founders and C-level stakeholders.
Step into the sales motion when technical weight helps win or shape work.