Interim Chief of Staff, R&D (6-12 month contract)

Interim Chief of Staff, R&D (6-12 month contract)

Join to apply for the Interim Chief of Staff, R&D (6-12 month contract) role at Omnea.

Our Mission

At Omnea, we’re reinventing how enterprise businesses operate, starting with the most painful parts: procurement – where a single purchase can drag on for months, trigger 50+ emails, and pull in Finance, Legal, Security, and IT just to get something approved. We’ve raised $75M from Khosla Ventures, Insight Partners, and Accel to change that. Our AI-native platform connects every person, step, and system so buying is fast, safe, and efficient – one place to request, automated approvals and renewals, real‑time supplier risk, and complete spend visibility.

It\’s a $7B+ untapped market, and our traction reflects the scale of the opportunity: we’ve 10x’d ARR to double‑digit millions in 18 months and are trusted by global enterprises like Spotify, MongoDB, Monzo, and Albertsons. We’re now the 4th fastest growing startup in Europe.

Our founders previously scaled Tessian (cybersecurity tech, backed by Seq, Balderton, Accel, acquired at Series C), and our team includes ex‑founders operators who’ve grown unicorns, shipped world‑class products, and executed at the highest levels. You’ll work alongside leaders like Ben, Abs, Sabrina, and Rebe.

What We’re Looking For

We’re hiring an Interim Chief of Staff, R&D to drive high‑impact execution across Omnea’s most critical technical priorities – from engineering hiring and operating rhythms, to special projects that sit directly with our engineering and product leadership.

You’ll be a force multiplier for our technical leadership team: helping our Tech Lead hit engineering hiring targets, supporting with cross‑functional initiatives, and owning technical work that sits between orgs together with Product and Ops. This is a high‑trust, high‑expectations role for someone who thrives in ambiguity and wants to help build an exceptional engineering organisation from the ground up.

What Can You Expect?

This role will be 80 % technical hiring & engineering enablement and 20 % everything else that needs to be done across Engineering Ops & Technical Strategic Projects.

You’ll learn how to build a world‑class engineering organisation by actually doing it:

• You’ll hit engineering hiring targets by driving execution across sourcing, process design, assessment and candidate engagement.
• You’ll build and manage outbound candidate campaigns (engineering, product, data, security, platform, and technical leadership roles).
• You’ll improve candidate experience and interview quality across the entire technical funnel.
• You’ll help shape and grow our technical employer brand across content, events, open‑source communities and external networks.
• You’ll support engineering leadership with onboarding, calibration, and capability building as the team scales.
• You’ll partner with Engineering Leadership to improve our operating systems: planning rhythms, org design, stand‑ups, reviews, tooling, and reporting.
• You’ll help enable our engineering team with better data, processes, and documentation.
• You’ll drive execution of high‑priority projects across the business (e.g. architecture simplification, reliability initiatives, technical debt programmes, internal tooling).
• You’ll research key technical areas, synthesise insights, and support decision‑making with clear data, analysis and proposals (e.g. build vs buy evaluations, platform migrations, AI infrastructure research).

About You

We don’t expect you to know exactly how to do absolutely everything when you join! We are looking for someone with the right attitude & skillset to take on this challenge.

• You have 4–6 years of experience in high‑growth tech companies (30–200 people) or similarly fast, ambiguous environments. You’ve sold something before – a product, idea, service, or your own company – and you’re excited to apply those commercial skills to technical hiring, engaging and closing high‑calibre engineers.
• You’re entrepreneurial, ambitious, and know that being great at hiring is a real career accelerator. You want to rise faster than any ‘normal’ path and you’re happy to roll up your sleeves to make that happen. You have a track record of exceptional performance – whatever you’ve chosen to invest in.
• You’re an outstanding communicator: clear, concise and able to build rapport with engineers, PMs, and execs. You learn fast (incl. technical concepts if needed), can understand our product and engineering systems, and you simplify complex problems into clear next steps.
• You’re outcomes‑focused with a strong bias to action. You prioritise ruthlessly, operate efficiently and autonomously, and care deeply about quality. You are proactive, accountable, and always moving things forward.
• Most importantly, you’re just a really good human – low‑ego, collaborative, reliable, and someone who builds trust and brings out the best in the people around you.

Dealbreakers

This is not for pure consultants/VCs without operating experience. It’s not for people who need heavy structure, or who want process over progress. If you don’t get energy from being in the weeds in e.g. building pipeline for hiring & making an impact (often requiring unglamorous work), you will not enjoy this role.

We embrace diversity

At Omnea, we embrace diversity. To build a product that\’s loved by everyone, we\’re best served by a team with all sorts of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn\’t quite match the full job spec! And regardless of your race, religion, colour, gender, or anything else! If you think you could be a good fit for Omnea, please reach out.

A few things to note

• We work Tuesdays, Wednesdays & Thursdays in‑person at our offices. At this early stage of our company life‑cycle it\’s important to us that we get this together‑time, and you can read more about why we believe this is a winning move here.
• We\’re commercial, ambitious and we don\’t pretend otherwise! We\’re actively seeking folks looking to make the most of a career‑defining opportunity, with the hunger to be part of building something really impressive. You can see our values here.
• We sometimes use AI note‑takers to help us transcribe interview notes, so we can be more present in your interview. If you\’d like to opt out of us using automatic transcribers, please note this in the free text field in your application, otherwise we\’ll take your application as confirmation that you\’re happy for us to use note‑takers (whether added to video calls or in the background).

We are proud to be recognised for both our culture and product, and we are just getting started. Join us as we grow!

Legal note: if you are viewing this posting outside of the Omnea careers\’ page, this may be an auto‑generated advertisement and may lack the full range of advertised information – please click through to the posting at https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/omnea to view additional advertised information on this posting.

Location: London, England, United Kingdom

Seniority level: Mid‑Senior level

Employment type: Full‑time

Job function: Administrative

Industries: Software Development