Engineering Manager in London

PAIR is a fast-growing AI adoption startup on a mission to help professionals and teams harness AI to do their best work. Our platform delivers personalised, AI-powered learning experiences and adoption support that help organisations rapidly harness AI at scale.

We already have strong traction:

• 15,000+ users
• Enterprise deployments with organisations including the Ministry of Justice, you.com and The MTC
• Backing from investors including Seedcamp, Venrex, Tom Hulme (Google Ventures) and Steve Garnett (ex-Chairman EMEA, Salesforce)

We’re still a small, high-calibre engineering team where people ship quickly and own meaningful parts of the product. We’re hiring an Engineering Manager to help us scale the team, improve delivery predictability, and support engineers to do the best work of their careers.

This is a hands-on Engineering Manager role in a fast-paced startup environment. You’ll work closely with the CTO, Product, Design and senior engineers to help our engineering pods deliver high-quality product work at pace. You’ll be responsible for creating clarity around what teams are working on, how confident we are in delivery, what risks need attention, and how engineers are growing. This is not a process-for-process’s-sake role. We need someone who can build lightweight, visible systems that help a strong team move faster with more confidence.

You’ll:

• Own the day-to-day operating rhythm for engineering pods, including planning, standups/check-ins, delivery tracking, forecasting and escalation
• Line manage engineers, supporting performance, growth, feedback, wellbeing and progression
• Coach pod leads and senior engineers as they take on more delivery, coordination and technical leadership responsibility
• Help teams break down ambiguous product work into clear, well-owned, deliverable plans
• Create transparent delivery forecasts in real calendar terms, with confidence levels, risks and trade-offs visible early
• Partner closely with Product and Design so that engineering plans are realistic, well-sequenced and commercially aligned
• Improve our engineering management systems as we scale from two feature pods toward three and beyond
• Support hiring by helping us assess candidates rigorously and onboard new engineers effectively

You’ll be joining at an important scaling point: the product is live with enterprise customers, the team is growing, and the engineering operating model is still malleable enough for the right person to shape it meaningfully.

What We’re Looking For

We’re looking for an experienced Engineering Manager who has already managed engineers in a high-accountability product environment.

Core experience:

• Previous experience as an Engineering Manager, including formal line management of software engineers
• Experience managing delivery for product engineering teams shipping customer-facing software
• Strong judgement around planning, sequencing, estimation, risk management and escalation
• Able to build lightweight, visible team operating systems rather than simply running inherited rituals
• Comfortable giving direct, constructive feedback and holding a high performance bar
• Strong written and verbal communication, especially around trade-offs, risks and decisions
• Commercial and product judgement: able to understand why delivery, UX, quality and customer commitments matter
• Enough technical depth to challenge plans, ask good questions and understand engineering trade-offs
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity, with real deadlines, shifting priorities and high expectations

Nice to have:

• Experience in a startup, scale-up or similarly fast-moving product environment
• Experience managing teams through rapid headcount growth
• Experience working with pods, squads or small autonomous product teams
• Experience hiring engineers and improving interview signal
• Experience in B2B SaaS, enterprise software, AI products or learning/adoption platforms
• Experience using AI tools to improve your own effectiveness and team workflows

Why Join PAIR?

• Shape the engineering org at the point it scales
• You’ll help design how Engineering works as we grow from a small team into a multi-pod organisation.
• High leverage: This role sits close to the CTO, Product and senior engineers. Your work will directly affect how quickly and confidently we can ship.
• Strong team, real ambition: We hire carefully and are building a high-calibre team that wants to do meaningful work at pace.
• Product with live customer impact: PAIR is already used by real organisations adopting AI, with significant scope to improve and expand the platform.
• Ownership without heavy bureaucracy: We want better systems, not bloated process. The right person will have room to shape how we scale.

Compensation & Working Setup

Salary: £100k-119k depending on experience

Hybrid: 2 days/week in our central London office, currently Tuesday/Wednesday

Anchor Weeks: around 7 times per year where the whole team collaborates in person, Monday to Thursday

Hiring Process

We aim to keep the process straightforward, rigorous and respectful of your time. We keep the process structured, practical and relevant to the role:

• Application form: Basic details on your EM, line-management, delivery and hiring experience, plus a few short written questions about concrete examples from previous roles.
• Introductory interview: A 30-minute conversation with the CTO to discuss your experience, the role, and mutual fit.
• EM case exercise: A self-paced, realistic engineering management scenario covering prioritisation, delivery planning, stakeholder communication and people judgement. We ask you to spend no more than 90 minutes.
• Final in-person round: Structured conversations with the CTO and team, covering delivery leadership, people management, scaling teams and how you would approach your first few months.