Head of Engineering

Location: Kyiv, Ukraine; hybrid

Company

hirify.global develops autonomous drone software that enables large, coordinated teams of drones to operate without pilots.

What you will do

• Set technical strategy and own architecture decisions as the product and engineering organization scales.
• Keep engineering work aligned with the roadmap, business value, and scalable product solutions.
• Build and manage core engineering processes covering pipelines, releases, testing, incident response, and technical debt.
• Coordinate cloud, onboard software, autonomy, QA, hardware integration, product, and field operations.
• Scale and lead engineering managers, team leads, and senior technical contributors.

Requirements

• Strong engineering leadership experience with complex, mission-critical, life-critical, or high-load enterprise and B2B systems.
• Experience managing teams of 50 or more people and leading engineering managers and technical leads.
• Embedded or hardware-close software experience, including Linux-based edge systems, networking, containers, companion computers, and ARM platforms such as NVIDIA Jetson or Raspberry Pi.
• Experience with distributed systems, unreliable connectivity, fault tolerance, recovery, observability, fleet management, and remote updates.
• Strong cloud and backend architecture knowledge covering APIs, databases, messaging, infrastructure, security, and production operations.
• Professional English and strong communication skills.

Nice to have

• Miltech experience, particularly Ukrainian miltech, or direct experience with drones, robotics, and autonomous systems.
• Familiarity with MAVLink, ArduPilot, PX4, or ROS 2.
• Experience with Python, C/C++, Podman, Docker, simulation, software-in-the-loop, or hardware-in-the-loop testing.
• Knowledge of secure boot, device hardening, signed software, hardware-backed identity, or degraded communication environments.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on autonomy and perception systems for Ukraine’s defense technology ecosystem and international expansion.
• Direct impact in a high-stakes defense industry where security decisions have real-world consequences.
• Professional growth through work with advanced defense technologies and international security practices.
• Competitive salary and benefits including insurance, paid sick leave, and 20 paid days off per year.
• Defense-sector benefits, including reservation-related support.

Hiring process

• Recruiter screen, technical interview, managerial interview, and final interview with the CEO and CPO.
• Background check followed by an offer.