Head of Engineering @ Junior

👶 About JuniorJunior is building the ultimate AI intelligence platform for high-stakes investment research.

Our software helps private equity firms, consultants and financial institutions complete high-stakes research workflows dramatically faster - from diligence and memo writing to market mapping, research synthesis and strategic analysis.

We’re building toward a future where AI can run substantially more of that work: conducting research, understanding evidence and producing outputs customers can use to make decisions.

Bootstrapped and profitable

~$30M+ ARR, after growing 10x last year

75+ people across New York, London and Sydney

25-person engineering team across six teams

Our engineering team has grown from a headcount of 6 to 25 this year so far

Trusted by the world's leading PE firms, consultancies, and financial institutions

Core stack: TypeScript, Next.js and PostgreSQL

AI-assisted development has already changed how quickly we can build. Our current engineering team operates with the output of a much larger organization - and that pace is only increasing.

We’re now looking for someone to build the engineering organization for Junior’s next chapter.

💡 The roleYou’ll report to our CTO, Nico, and own the day-to-day operations of engineering: people, planning, delivery, reliability and recruiting.

The CTO will continue to own product and technology direction, frontier experimentation, AI-native development and consequential long-term architecture.

You’ll turn that direction into results.

You’ll have the authority to challenge scope, sequencing and commitments when they aren’t credible - and the responsibility to make sure the organization delivers on the ones it makes.

This is not a role where you spend your first three months observing from the sidelines.

You will begin by doing the work:

Ship high-quality production code

Learn our systems and development tools

Join architecture and debugging discussions

Work directly with engineers, Product and customers

Take an on-call shift

Build firsthand context before changing how the organization operates

You’ll progressively take ownership of engineering operations, but this will remain a deeply technical leadership role. You’ll stay close to the code, architecture and important production problems.

🎯 What you’ll ownDelivery: Set clear priorities, owners and achievable scope across Engineering, Product and Design

Engineering leadership: Develop hands-on Engineering Leads who can run strong, autonomous teams

Organization design: Build a lean organization capable of growing toward 40–60 engineers where the business justifies it

Recruiting: Own engineering hiring and help us maintain a very high technical bar as the team grows

People: Lead feedback, performance and development while giving excellent ICs room to grow without becoming managers

Reliability: Establish clear ownership of critical systems, improve incident response and eliminate recurring failures

Engineering effectiveness: Remove friction across tooling, testing, reviews and delivery

AI-native development: Turn AI-assisted engineering into measurable improvements in speed and quality

Financial ownership: Own engineering’s infrastructure, tooling and AI spend - and be accountable for the value we get from it

The goal is not to add process for the sake of it. It’s to introduce structure where it helps us move faster - and remove it when it doesn’t.

🚀 What success looks likeIn your first 90 daysYou’ve shipped meaningful production code

You understand the systems, team and customers

You’ve earned technical trust across the organization

You’ve established clear operating baselines

You’ve identified a small number of high-impact improvements grounded in firsthand experience

By six monthsYou own routine engineering operations and most engineering recruiting

Every team has clear ownership and strong leadership

Commitments are more credible and risks surface earlier

The CTO spends substantially less time assigning work and chasing project updates

Engineering ships faster with fewer recurring failures

Engineers still have autonomy, direct founder access and room to pursue ambitious ideas

The impact of engineering work is clearly connected to customer and business outcomes

🔥 About youYou’re still deeply technical and can write production code, understand unfamiliar systems and debug difficult problems

You’ve led engineering teams through meaningful growth and ambiguity

You can point to specific improvements you’ve made across delivery, reliability and organizational clarity

You’ve hired excellent engineers and developed strong ICs and engineering leaders

You’re comfortable giving difficult feedback and making performance decisions

You know when management and process help - and when they get in the way

You’ve built software where reliability, security and customer trust genuinely matter

You use AI development tools thoughtfully and have strong views on how they will change engineering teams

You can challenge a highly technical founder constructively

You want to work closely with Product, customers and the codebase

You’re based in New York, or committed to relocating, and excited to work with the team in person

We care far more about what you’ve personally built, owned and improved than your previous title.

Prior VP or Head of Engineering experience is not required.