Head of Product Engineering (AI)

Location: 100% remote in EMEA; CET/CEST time zone required, with Germany/Munich preferred and Germany or the UK ideal.

Company

hirify.global builds security compliance systems that automate evidence collection and guide SMBs to ISO 27001, GDPR, TISAX, and SOC 2 certification.

What you will do

• Own engineering organisation, technical direction, development pace, quality, and team structure.
• Ship a meaningful AI feature during the first month and continue building with the team periodically.
• Improve cycle time through tooling, review and testing practices, work allocation, and development processes.
• Establish engineering standards for testing, code review, security review, zero-bug quality, and data integrity.
• Lead engineering hiring, define levels and performance reviews, and build managers and tech leads as the team grows from 8 engineers toward 12–16.
• Work directly with the CTO and collaborate with product, Sales, and Customer Success leadership.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 6+ years leading engineering teams and 2+ years managing managers or tech leads.
• Experience growing an engineering team to 15+ at a VC-funded startup and hiring most of the team.
• Experience building lightweight hiring processes, levels, performance reviews, and salary bands from scratch.
• Experience shipping AI features to production, including retrieval, RAG, and agentic workflows, with understanding of reliability on real customer data.
• Hands-on production experience with Claude Code and Cursor, including informed opinions on AI-assisted engineering workflows and technical debt.
• Senior or principal engineering experience before management, with the ability to contribute to design reviews, debugging, and feature development.
• Experience building a product from zero to one or scaling a startup team through the messy middle.
• Strong product judgment, high standards, direct performance feedback, proactive written communication, and willingness to pair program.
• Ability to work in the European time zone; EMEA-based, ideally in Germany or the UK.

Nice to have

• Experience growing an engineering organisation past 30 people.
• Experience taking an engineering team through an ISO 27001 or SOC 2 audit.
• Experience leading engineering for a B2B SaaS product moving from SMB to mid-market.

Culture & Benefits

• 100% remote work with a virtual office in Gather and fewer than two hours of meetings per week for engineers.
• Small, temporary teams organised around problems, with asynchronous written communication and strong focus on shipping.
• AI-assisted product and engineering workflows using Claude, Cursor, encoded engineering rules, and design QA.
• Zero-bug policy with immediate handling of critical issues, 48-hour handling for high-severity issues, and weekly quality reviews.
• €1,000 annual development budget, remote workspace support, co-working access, comprehensive health insurance, MacBook and peripherals.
• 26 vacation days plus local public holidays, equity, and an annual company retreat.

Hiring process

• 30-minute talent team introduction, 45-minute interview with Grigory, and a 60-minute technical interview.
• 1.5-hour AI-assisted build session covering system design and building part of a feature with AI.
• Two-hour leadership session with the founders.