Head of Software Development in London

About ZELP

ZELP is an agricultural technology company committed to creating a sustainable future for agriculture - one that meets the needs of present and future generations, promoting human and environmental health, animal welfare, and social and economic equity. Our first focus is to develop and scale technology that measures and mitigates methane emissions in the livestock industry. Today, 1.3 billion people rely on the industry for their livelihoods and food security. However, it is the single biggest human-driven source of methane emissions globally, emitting more than both the oil & gas industry and the coal industry. The deployment of our technologies on a global scale has the potential to drive half the global methane reduction needed by 2030, and to greatly transform the beef and dairy industries. ZELP was an inaugural winner of the Terra Carta Design Lab, and has received funding and support from the European Commission, Innovate UK, The Global Methane Hub and the Gates Foundation.

About The Role

As Head of Software Development, you will oversee the architecture, development, and delivery of all software components, spanning web applications, backend systems, and Machine Learning (ML) infrastructure. You will also be a key partner to the heads of Hardware, Design Engineering, and Animal Science, ensuring software is seamlessly integrated with physical systems, user experience, and domain expertise. This is a hands-on, strategic leadership role where you'll balance technical depth with people management, guiding your team while collaborating with cross-functional leaders to drive innovation.

Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership

• Define, implement, and scale the software architecture across web, backend, and ML systems.
• Maintain strong engineering standards for code quality, security, testing, and deployment.
• Lead key technical initiatives, occasionally contributing code or architecture reviews.
• Drive integration of software with hardware systems, sensors, and data pipelines.

• Build, lead, and mentor a multidisciplinary engineering team.
• Establish effective workflows for development, QA, deployment, and iteration.
• Foster a collaborative, innovative, and high-performance engineering culture.
• Partner with People/HR in hiring and scaling the team.

• Collaborate closely with the heads of Hardware, Design Engineering, and Animal Science to ensure end-to-end product integration.
• Translate business and research needs into scalable software solutions.
• Balance speed of delivery with long-term maintainability and scalability.
• Support leadership in communicating technical vision to investors, partners, and stakeholders.

Requirements

• 7+ years of software development experience, with at least 3 in a leadership role.
• Proven expertise in web application development (frontend + backend).
• Hands-on experience with machine learning workflows and/or data-heavy systems.
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure and DevOps practices.
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional hardware or science-focused teams.
• Exceptional communication and leadership skills.

Nice-to-Have

• Prior experience in startups or multi-disciplinary product environments.
• Familiarity with MLOps and embedded systems integration.
• Background or interest in scientific/biological domains.

Our Tech Stack (Current & Planned)

• Frontend: React, TypeScript
• Backend: Node.js, Python, REST & GraphQL APIs
• Cloud & Infra: AWS (ECS, S3, Lambda), Docker, Cloudformation, Pulumi, CI/CD with GitHub Actions
• ML/AI: PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, MLflow for experiment tracking, Zenml for ML pipelines
• Data: PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, data pipelines with Zenml

We are open to evolving the stack and expect you to influence technical decisions as we scale.