Head of Engineering; BC

Referment is working with a small, well-funded London startup building real-time speech translation for real-world conversations — technology that lets two people with no shared language talk as easily as old friends. They're right at the start: no one has built this before, and the team values first-principles thinking, simple solutions to hard problems, and clean systems over patches.

Referment is working with a small, well-funded London startup building real-time speech translation for real-world conversations — technology that lets two people with no shared language talk as easily as old friends. They're right at the start: no one has built this before, and the team values first-principles thinking, simple solutions to hard problems, and clean systems over patches. As Head of Engineering, you'll work closely with the product and AI leadership.

You'll be expected to be comfortable across the full stack — AI, backend and frontend — moving between them as the product demands. This is a small team, so versatility matters more than specialisation right now.

• Own engineering delivery across AI, backend and frontend as the product grows
• Fly solo and get hands-on early, while designing an architecture that scales to a larger team
• Tackle complex, ambiguous problems in a greenfield product with real technical depth
• Shape engineering practices in a company that builds code, products and processes as clear, independent modules

• You've shipped impactful products before
• You're sharp, curious, and energised by complex, ambiguous problems rather than comfortable, predictable ones
• You know how to scale an architecture from a one-person effort to a team as the company grows
• Experience building real-time audio or developer-facing API platforms is a significant plus

This could suit a senior full-stack or platform engineer who has shipped a product end-to-end and wants genuine ownership of the technical direction at a company from day one.