renew - Head of Engineering

About us
At renew, we’re a nature data and intelligence company on a mission to drive large‑scale nature recovery. We
combine data, science, and technology to help enterprise clients value and restore nature — creating
measurable environmental and economic impact.
We’re expanding our customer and internal platform team and are looking for an experienced, hands-on
Engineering Lead who will take over day-to-day technical leadership as renew scales from an MVP into a durable
product platform.

This role is for you if you want:

• High ownership + high impact on a mission-driven product with real users and real delivery
  pressure
• To ship - not just plan. You’ll be a builder who also sets direction and standards for the team
• To lead a small team (starting with our first 2 engineers) by setting a high engineering bar and helping
  others level up fast
• To partner tightly with Product/Design/Science to turn complex nature + MRV (Monitoring, Reporting
  and Verification) workflows into simple, usable software
  
• To thrive in ambiguity: you can make pragmatic tradeoffs and keep momentum without sacrificing
  correctness
• To contribute to strategic direction during the formative, scaling stage of a venture, with entrepreneurial energy that connects tech opportunities to commercial vision

If you want a narrow role focused on meetings, tickets, and status updates, this is not the role for you!

What you will do

• Own delivery for key product areas end-to-end: technical feasibility → technical design →
  execution → release → iteration
• Stay hands-on and write code: you will be relied upon to ship critical parts of the stack yourself
  (especially in the early stages of the role)
• Provide day-to-day technical leadership by setting delivery pace, quality and efficiency standards,
  providing technical mentorship, and unblocking engineers
• Collaborate closely with other team members, including product managers, designers, and scientists
  to deliver a scientifically robust and user-friendly products
• Drive technical design and make the right tradeoffs across frontend, backend, and data workflows
• Raise engineering quality through code reviews, patterns, testing discipline, and pragmatic
  standards
• Establish lightweight operating cadence: clear definitions of done, reliable releases, and strong
  engineering hygiene
• Improve platform foundations: performance, reliability, observability, security, and cost awareness
• Advise the CEO, and strategize across the leadership team on how tech engineering excellence and innovation can accelerate the company's growth

This role provides the opportunity to become an early leader at a startup with significant growth
potential, and expectation that the scope of the role will increase as renew expands

What we are looking for

• 7–10+ years building and shipping production software in fast-moving product environments
• Exceptional full-stack fundamentals: API design, data modelling, UI architecture, performance,
  debugging, and reliability
  - Expert with TypeScript/Node backend systems

         - Experience with React + TypeScript on the frontend

         - Strong Postgres skills; experience with geospatial/mapping concepts is a plus

• Proven ownership: you’ve led meaningful projects end-to-end and shipped to production repeatedly
• Strong product sense and a high bar for UI/UX quality: you care about usability, accessibility, and
  polish - and you coach others to do the same
• Experience building data-heavy B2B SaaS: dashboards, workflows, permissions, auditability, internal tooling
• Experience leading a small team with clear communication, good judgment, and consistent execution
  
• Experience using AI coding assistants to substantially increase development speed and efficiency while maintaining high standards of code quality and architectural integrity
• Comfortable operating with incomplete requirements - you can turn ambiguity into a plan, then deliver
• A “builder-leader” mindset: you can write great code, but also make others better through feedback and direction

Nice to have

• Exposure to domains like climate / nature / MRV, supply chain, compliance, or other high-integrity
  data contexts
• Experience establishing early-team foundations: CI/CD, environments, logging/metrics, incident
  hygiene, release cadence

Role details

• Full‑time permanent position, starting as soon as possible
• Remote – based in European or UK time zones
• Competitive compensation and eligibility for equity participation
• Leadership opportunity architecting the full engineering foundations of a fast‑growing climate startup