Head of Engineering

Kpler is the leading provider of data intelligence for the commodity markets . Our software aggregates data from hundreds of sources including radar and satellite imagery as well as logistics, governmental, and shipping databases. By connecting the dots across fragmented information landscapes, we bring our clients – mostly commodities producers, oil and gas companies, trading houses, public utilities, shipping companies, financial institutions, and hedge funds – unique, real‑time understanding of supply and demand in the commodity markets. The company has a major presence in 9 locations (Paris, London, Brussels, Dubai, Singapore, Houston, New York, Cape Town, Tokyo). With individuals of various backgrounds, diverse skills and international experiences, being global & inclusive is in our DNA!

What you will be doing

Functional management

• Prepare and manage the engineering department budget.
• Identify staffing and tooling needs.
• Make outsourcing decisions where needed.
• Identify, select and manage vendors.
• Report on overall organizational cost and activities.

People management

• Build a world‑class team with a brilliant engineering culture.
• Own and enhance our engineering brand externally.
• Improve the quality and efficiency of our hiring process and take on responsibilities for each hiring process.
• Enhance coaching, learning and knowledge sharing within the tech team, ensuring that we have the right frameworks to help our engineers and engineering managers be efficient, learn and grow their careers.

Quality

• Evangelize the quality of code and engineering best practices across the organization.
• Understand, analyze and make recommendations on the advancement of standards and processes to enhance consistency of best practices in the department overall.
• Design a framework to increase and monitor code quality, implement metrics, ensure documentation and knowledge are well communicated.

Delivery

• Build the right things at the right pace by working cross‑functionally with business leaders, head of product and senior technical leaders within your team to create and prioritize the engineering roadmap and set organizational goals and priorities aligned with the overall business strategy.
• Build systems and metrics to monitor progress, challenge teams and make trade‑offs as appropriate.
• Take ownership for ensuring that all deployment lands correctly without delays and bugs.

Who we are looking for

• Previous experience working for a high‑growth fast‑paced start‑up, directly involved in growing a team.
• Successfully led internationally distributed and multi‑disciplinary teams of 30+ people.
• Track record of attracting, hiring and retaining top engineering talent; supporting and developing people both managers and senior individual contributors; familiar and fully bought in with servant‑leadership mindset.
• Technical background working with Python, Kafka, Go, Scala, open‑source technologies and data pipelines; capable of asking relevant questions to the teams and helping them improve their architecture.
• Great at building strong, effective relationships with people from different disciplines.
• Scientific and data‑centric approach to problems; continuous enhancement and data‑driven decisions.
• Fully comfortable with remote and flexible work arrangements for engineering teams.

What we offer

• This role is based in Paris or London with opportunity for partial remote.
• We solve complex technical problems with cutting‑edge technology; we build real algorithms.
• Our growth is exponential; we are 25 devs now and will double in the next 2 years.
• We build new features and products every day; we frequently tackle brand new business areas.
• We are still small enough for you to get exposure to our entire tech architecture and close to the business and impact you are making.
• We value flexibility, collaboration and an employee‑centric approach. We also value pragmatism, hard‑working and intellectual excellence.
• You will work in a truly global environment with offices in six countries, more than 20 nationalities, and speak more than 15 languages.
• We offer competitive compensation and benefits; we look for feedback and opportunities to improve them every day.