Head of Engineering

Job Title: Head Of Engineering

Team: Engineering

Location: Onsite-Santa Monica, CA

Employment Type: Fulltime, Salaried, Exempt

Reports To: SVP of Product & Technology

Plug is an automotive fintech startup building the marketplace for electric vehicles. Consumers, dealers, and commercial partners trade in, sell, and auction used EVs through a platform built exclusively for electric, with nothing adapted from legacy automotive.

Consumers can get an instant cash offer in minutes, backed by data-driven pricing, battery state-of-health analysis, with pickup, payment, and title transfer handled end-to-end. Franchise and independent dealers across the United States bid in real time on inventory sourced directly from these consumers, dealers, and commercial partners. The result is a single platform that gives sellers a fast, fair exit and gives dealers a dedicated channel for sourcing used EV inventory.

Founded in 2023 and led by former Tesla executives, Plug has facilitated $100M in EV sales since launch and is backed by a $20M Series A from Lightspeed Venture Partners. We're building the most AI-native startup team in Los Angeles, full of operators, engineers, and ML researchers laying the transaction rails for the used EV market's exponential growth.

Here’s why you should be part of Plug:

• You'll own a piece of the biggest infrastructure opportunity in automotive.
• You'll work on a platform built exclusively for EVs, with nothing adapted from legacy automotive.
• You'll be part of an AI-native company. We're rethinking how work gets done at a fundamental level.
• You'll work directly with operators who have scaled multi-billion dollar businesses in automotive, EV, and marketplaces.
• You'll have real ownership, high autonomy, and a direct line to company outcomes.

We are looking for a Head of Engineering to lead our engineering team and help shape the technical foundation of a fast-growing Series A company. You will report to the SVP of Product and Technology and partner closely to align on product vision and how that is executed by engineering.

This is a player-coach role. You will spend roughly half your time as an individual contributor – arbitrating architecture decisions, staying close to the systems, and individual contribution across features and tech debt – and the other half leading the team: setting direction, building engineering culture, collaborating on AI-native processes, and growing the organization.

The team is small, talented and moves fast. You will be stepping into an organization that has strong individual contributors and real technical momentum. Your job is to raise the ceiling – and to encourage what is working. We are looking to hire additional engineers, so you will be growing the team from day one.

We are building a culture that cares about collaboration, encourages intellectual honesty, celebrates technical excellence, and is driven by the company's goals. We believe diversity of perspective and experience are key to building great products and technology and a thriving team. Sounds cool? Let's work together.

• Set the technical vision and engineering direction for the team, working in partnership with the SVP of Product and Technology to ensure engineering strategy is tightly coupled to business goals.
• Partner with the SVP of Product and Technology on product direction, roadmap sequencing, and technology strategy; own engineering execution and delivery against that plan.
• Collaborate across functions – product, operations, and business leadership – to ensure engineering work is well-aligned, well-communicated, and measurably impactful.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team – setting a high technical bar, building a culture of ownership, and retaining strong individual contributors by keeping them challenged and autonomous.
• Be an architectural leader – drive the evolution of systems architecture, make sound technology tradeoffs, and help the team navigate the balance between velocity and long-term maintainability.
• Continue to be an individual contributor roughly half the time – writing code, reviewing pull requests at depth,…