Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering

Lead the next stage of engineering at Giant Group. You will improve how an established team builds and runs software, strengthen delivery and reliability, develop our people and use modern tooling, automation and AI to make engineering more effective.

Working daily with the Head of Product and closely with the Group CTO, you will help decide what to retain, improve or replace while protecting the services our customers and workers depend on.

Location: UK-based, remote-first; quarterly leadership meetings in London

Reporting to: Group CTO

Team : Around 20–25 people across the UK and Pakistan

Package: Competitive senior leadership package, dependent on experience, plus performance-related bonus

Application Deadline: 16th November 2026

About Giant

Giant is a workforce management business supporting recruitment agencies, enterprise and SME businesses, contractors and workers across payroll, compliant employment solutions, invoice financing, back-office management and workforce technology. We have operated for over 30 years, are completely self-funded and are expanding in the USA. Our next stage is increasingly platform-led, making journeys simpler and allowing revenue and service quality to grow faster than headcount.

What you will lead

• Develop the team, clarify ownership and delegate effectively. Assess capability objectively, coach people, address performance concerns fairly and recruit where needed.
• Work daily with Product to agree realistic scope and delivery commitments. Make capacity, dependencies and risks visible and own Engineering’s execution.
• Improve the workflow from development through testing, release and support. Strengthen secure development, quality, reliability, documentation and incident learning.
• Lead practical modernisation and technical debt management, balancing business value and risk within the CTO’s technology direction.
• Introduce useful AI and automation into engineering work, measure results and retain appropriate review, security and quality controls.
• Own the engineering budget and capability plan, with support for well-evidenced investment in people, tools and modernisation.

You will have authority over day-to-day engineering decisions and direct access to the CTO, CEO and Head of Product. The CTO retains Group technology direction and approval of major architectural changes.

What you will bring

• Substantial engineering experience and current technical judgement: you can understand established systems, challenge decisions, assess risks and lead safe modernisation.
• Proven leadership of an engineering organisation of comparable scale and complexity, with evidence of improvements you personally led in delivery, quality or output.
• Strong people leadership, including coaching, delegation, hiring and managing difficult performance issues.
• Practical experience using AI development tools yourself and helping a team adopt them, with clear examples of benefits and quality controls.
• Close Product partnership, commercial judgement and clear communication, including constructive challenge and explaining technical trade-offs.
• A pragmatic, curious approach suited to a lean, entrepreneurial business: you learn, adapt, raise concerns early and use proportionate processes.

Our estate includes JavaScript, .NET Framework, .NET Core, C# and Microsoft SQL Server. Experience with these technologies is useful, but we do not require you to be an expert developer in this stack or to code every day. Strong experience modernising comparable business-critical systems is also relevant. You must be credible with senior engineers and able to make independent technical judgements.

Distributed teams, on-premise and cloud environments, financially sensitive systems and entrepreneurial businesses are useful additional experience. Ability to work in the UK is required; visa sponsorship may be considered for an exceptional candidate.

What we offer

A 37-hour week, with flexibility alongside team collaboration and operational responsibilities; 23 days’ holiday, rising to 26, plus UK bank holidays and your birthday off; workplace pension, Giant Advantage perks and learning and development support. Probation is three months. The People team will explain benefit eligibility and start dates.

What success looks like

In the first three months, understand the team, systems and constraints, establish performance baselines and agree a prioritised improvement plan with the CTO and Product. Over six to twelve months, demonstrate more predictable delivery, better release quality, developing engineers and measurable benefits from tooling and AI.

Our hiring process

An initial People team conversation is followed by a technical and leadership discussion with the CTO and CEO, then a Product partnership discussion with the Head of Product and CEO. We will explore specific examples, your own contribution and practical engineering judgement. Any preparation will be explained in advance and kept proportionate.

Giant Group is an equal opportunities employer. Strong written and verbal English proficiency is required for this role.