Head of Engineering at Fifth Dimension AI

City of Westminster, England, United Kingdom -

Full Time

Start Date

Immediate

Expiry Date

31 May, 26

Salary

180000.0

Posted On

02 Mar, 26

Experience

10 year(s) or above

Remote Job

Yes

Telecommute

Yes

Sponsor Visa

Skills

Engineering Leadership, Team Scaling, Hiring, Performance Management, Delivery Management, Architecture Discussion, AI-Assisted Development, Evaluation-Driven Development, Organizational Design, Process Establishment, Career Development, Security, Compliance, Technical Credibility, Written Communication, Distributed Team Management

Industry

technology;Information and Internet

Description

About Us Fifth Dimension is bringing vibe working to document-heavy industries 🌈. Today we work with real estate businesses in the US, EU and APAC, automating complex tasks, extracting valuable insights from documents, and empowering professionals to focus on high-impact work. Our AI workspace transforms how large investment managers and developers handle leases, development documents, and investment decisions. We're a London, New York and Singapore based startup with an ample runway, backed by Tier 1 European and American investors. Our founders, Johnny Morris and Dr. Kate Jarvis bring a powerful blend of expertise (and spice 🌶️): Johnny has 17+ years applying data and analytics to Real Estate, while Kate holds a Stanford PhD and 12 years of executive experience across Silicon Valley and London startups. At Fifth Dimension, we're demanding yet encouraging, valuing experimentation and kind challenges. Our company values, Own It, Ship It, and Don't Be Boring, drive us to deliver exceptional results while fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. The Challenge It's 9 AM on a Monday in London. You're reviewing the week's priorities across engineering, spotting a cross-team dependency that's about to stall a key feature launch—and you unblock it before it becomes a problem. Over lunch, you're in a 1:1 with a senior engineer who's ready for more ownership, sketching out a path for them to lead a new area. By Wednesday, you're on a call with the New York team, aligning on a customer delivery that spans time zones, then into a working session with the CTO and product leads pressure-testing the architecture for our next major initiative. By Thursday, you're reviewing a hiring pipeline for Singapore as we build out our APAC presence. By Friday, two new engineers have accepted offers, your team demo blew the founders away, and you're reflecting on how different this org looks from just three months ago. This is what building looks like. Not just building software—building the engineering organisation that builds the software. About You You've scaled an engineering team before—around 10 to 100+ people in product engineering orgs—and you know how much has to go right simultaneously. Hiring great people, keeping them engaged and growing, knowing which practices to introduce at which stage, when to add structure and when to stay out of the way, and how to preserve the autonomy and intellectual honesty that make small teams great even as the organisation doubles and trebles in size. You're technically credible without needing to be the best engineer in the room. You can engage substantively in architecture discussions, you earn the respect of senior ICs, and you know enough to ask the right questions and smell when something's off. But your superpower is people and delivery, not pull requests. You understand that scaling an AI-first engineering organisation carries its own distinct challenges—especially right now. Coding agents and AI-assisted development workflows are evolving at breakneck speed. The tools your team uses today might look completely different in six months. This is the best time in a generation to drive transformational change in how software gets built, but it takes genuinely open-minded, AI-first leadership to make it happen. You don't just follow these developments—you have first-hand experience with what AI can do in software development, and you bring conviction about where it's heading. You're comfortable with probabilistic outputs, evaluation-driven development, and the reality that traditional testing playbooks don't translate directly to AI products. You've seen what's possible when engineering teams embrace this shift, and you want to lead one that's at the frontier. You write clearly and think in systems—both technical and organisational. You coach rather than command. You've had the difficult conversations, run the performance reviews, made the hard calls, and learned from the ones that didn't go well. You're passionate about your own growth and create environments where others grow too. You seek feedback, iterate on your own approach, and genuinely believe that the best engineering cultures are built, not inherited. Your Impact Reporting to our CTO Chen, you'll take operational ownership of 5D's engineering organisation as we scale through Series A and beyond. You'll partner closely with our CTO on technical direction and architecture, and with our product and design colleagues on priorities and customer impact—owning the people, process, and delivery that turn strategy into shipped product. You'll build the engineering culture that carries us from a tight-knit London team to a multi-geo organisation spanning London, New York, and Singapore. This role is about operational leadership—not being the most senior technical decision-maker, and not coding day-to-day. It's about making everyone around you more effective, more aligned, and more ambitious. What You'll Own Org design and scaling — Structure the team for growth, hire engineering leads, and build our presence in new geographies while preserving the autonomy that makes our best engineers thrive Delivery and process — Establish the coordination, rituals, and release practices that keep us shipping fast without sacrificing quality People and culture — Own career development, performance management, and the health of engineering culture as we grow Engineering operations — Be the operational backbone for compliance, security, and the day-to-day machinery that keeps the org running smoothly Leadership partnership — Free up CTO and CPO time by owning the operational load, and be a trusted voice on engineering across the leadership team Our Values and Engineering Culture At 5D, we embody three core principles: Own it, Ship it, and Don't be boring. Our engineering team values: Product-Minded Engineering: Understanding the "why" behind features and using technical expertise to inform product decisions Intellectual Honesty: Backing discussions with data and acknowledging knowledge gaps Effective Time Management: Setting clear timeboxes and abandoning approaches that aren't working Clear Communication: Writing self-documenting code and providing detailed explanations Innovation Mindset: Forming well-reasoned opinions backed by data and continuously learning Personal Growth: Supporting development through challenging work and opportunities to expand expertise What We're Looking For Experience scaling an engineering org in an early-stage environment (around 10 to 100+)—you've made mistakes and learned from them Technical credibility that earns the respect of senior ICs without needing to be the most senior engineer First-hand experience with AI-assisted development tools and workflows—you've used them, you understand their potential, and you have a point of view on where they're heading Strong written communication—we're async-friendly and distributed, and clear documentation is essential Proven people leadership: 1:1s, performance reviews, difficult conversations, hiring and firing Effective peer management across functions—you build trust and alignment without formal authority Demonstrable growth mindset, personally and organisationally Experience with AI products—you understand evaluation-driven development and probabilistic outputs Track record working with highly autonomous senior ICs without defaulting to command-and-control International or distributed team experience across time zones Ambition and resilience—we're a seed-stage company tackling ambitious challenges Commercial awareness—delivering continuous value to customers is essential Nice to Have (But Not Required) Experience with vertical SaaS or enterprise software Real estate or adjacent industry knowledge Has built or worked on agentic systems What We Offer You We're building something extraordinary and we want extraordinary people. Our benefits package goes beyond the standard startup offering—from tailored support for life's challenges (IVF, gender-affirming care, ADHD diagnosis, and more), to meaningful parental leave. £120,000–180,000 salary per annum + meaningful equity 📈 Enhanced pension contributions (5%) and unlimited annual leave £100 monthly well-being budget and £1,000 annual training budget Tailored support for exceptional life challenges—gender-affirming care, specialist medical needs, neurodivergence diagnosis, fertility treatment, therapy, and more Enhanced parental leave (14 weeks full pay for primary caregiver, 6 weeks for secondary) Electric Car Scheme (salary sacrifice) The Process Submit your CV, along with answers to the handful of questions we ask of every candidate A screening call with our CTO to explore role fit, motivation, and background A second screen with our CPO on culture, product mindset, and communication A short async assignment to prepare ahead of the on-site A super half-day on-site: Part A — Present your assignment, followed by a working session with CTO and CPO on org design, process, and real scenarios Part B — Team interactions with engineers, Product, CS, and Commercial leads—culture fit, management style, and a mock 1:1 or team discussion Part C — Final conversation with our CEO on vision alignment Reference calls Alternatively, we offer a paid one-week trial for candidates who are available

Responsibilities

The Head of Engineering will take operational ownership of the engineering organization, partnering with the CTO on technical direction and product teams on priorities to ensure strategy translates into shipped product. Key duties include owning organizational design, delivery processes, people management, culture health, and serving as the operational backbone for the engineering function.