Head of Engineering

Job Title: Head Of Engineering

Team: Engineering

Location: Onsite - Sawtelle (Between Santa Monica & West LA)

Employment Type: Fulltime, Salaried, Exempt

Reports To: SVP of Product & Technology

About Plug

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.

• Set the technical vision and engineering direction for the team, in partnership with the SVP of Product & Technology, ensuring engineering strategy is tightly coupled to business goals.

• Partner with the SVP of Product & 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 so 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 balance velocity against long-term maintainability.

• Be close enough to the systems to arbitrate architecture decisions and engage credibly in technical debate without owning day-to-day implementation.

• Systematically identify and reduce technical debt with a pragmatic, incremental approach.

• Partner with the SVP of Product & Technology to build an AI-native SDLC bringing hands-on experience with agentic coding tools, working with product to structure requirements and context that improve agentic results, and iterating on practices over time to get measurably better outcomes.

• Own engineering team planning, recruiting, and growth.

• 8+ years in software engineering, with 3+ years in an engineering leadership role.

• Prior startup experience has built or materially shaped an engineering function at an early-stage company where process was still being defined and priorities shifted regularly.

• Comfort contributing to a production codebase you may not be doing so day to day today, but you can engage with code, review, and architecture at the level of a strong senior engineer. Higher-altitude leaders are welcome; we are sizing this team to grow.

• Recent, practical hands-on experience coding with AI you have been through the shift yourself rather than observed it. If your current role sits above the code, side projects count.

• Has joined an existing engineering team with established contributors, with a track record of building trust quickly, preserving contributor autonomy and momentum, and raising the bar without disrupting what is working.

• Has hired, grown, and retained…