Head of Engineering Pillar

Head Of Engineering Pillar

Millions of people across Europe want better ways to build long-term wealth, but traditional investing often feels complex or out of reach. Mintos is solving that. We've built a platform that makes investing in income-generating assets simple, transparent, and accessible. And we're expanding fast.

We're looking for a Head of Engineering Pillar, an experienced engineer who has made a deliberate move into people management and is ready to lead one of two domain pillars in our engineering organisation, working alongside a peer Head of Engineering Pillar and the CTO. Someone who still thinks like an engineer: you can read an RFC, challenge an architectural assumption, and tell when a technical estimate doesn't add up.

But you've chosen to scale your impact through building teams, growing engineers, and shaping how an engineering organisation works.

You'll manage 20-30 engineers across backend, frontend, QA, and test automation, organised into multiple cross-functional delivery teams. You own hiring, performance, career development, and capacity allocation. Tech Leads own the technical direction. Product Owners own prioritisation. Your job is making sure the right people are on the right teams, that they're growing, and that the organisation has the capacity it needs.

You stay close enough to the technology to make informed decisions about people and capacity, without stepping into the Tech Lead's chair. If you're energised by building engineering organisations in a regulated, high-stakes environment, we'd love to talk.

Could this role be a great match for you?

This is a new role in a newly restructured engineering organisation. We've separated people management from technical leadership:
Tech Leads own technical direction and delivery, Heads of Pillars own people and capacity. You'll be one of our first Heads of Engineering Pillar, alongside a peer leading the other pillar, which means establishing how the function works day-to-day: building relationships with Tech Leads who previously managed their own engineers, earning trust across the pillar, defining the practice together with your peer, and setting the cadence for how people management operates  you thrive in environments where the structure is clear but the practice still needs to be built, this might be your next move.

What you'll do

As a Head of Engineering Pillar, you'll own the people side of a domain pillar and work in close coordination with your peer Head of Engineering Pillar, Tech Leads, Product Owners, Platform Leads, and the CTO.

You will:

• Own the full people management lifecycle: 1:1s, performance reviews, career development, compensation inputs, onboarding, and difficult conversations
• Assemble and recompose cross-functional delivery teams as initiatives start, scale, and complete. Allocate capacity across them, balancing individual growth against delivery demands
• Act as hiring manager for all engineering roles in the pillar: design the process, calibrate the bar, assess candidates technically, and make hiring decisions
• Participate in architecture reviews and RFCs as a stakeholder: challenge assumptions, flag capacity risks, and help Tech Leads think through trade-offs between technical investment and feature delivery
• Provide the CTO with structured visibility into pillar health, hiring pipeline, capacity, and risks. Partner with the People team on salary reviews, workforce planning, and organisational development
• Collaborate with pillar teams to define, implement and improve the way of working to test assumptions and deliver products fast with focus on customer value and minimising waste
• Coordinate with your peer Head of Engineering Pillar on shared practices, cross-pillar capacity and talent movement, calibration of performance and hiring standards, and a consistent engineering culture across the organisation

Your professional skills and background

Must-haves:

• A background in software engineering: you've built and shipped software professionally, and you can engage credibly in architecture and system design discussions today
• A deliberate move into people management: you chose this path and can articulate why
• 5+ years of experience in engineering leadership or people management roles, managing 15+ engineers across multiple teams
• Track record owning the full people management cycle: hiring as hiring manager, performance reviews, capacity allocation, career development, and difficult conversations
• Comfort with a role-separated model: you engage with technical direction on a strategic level, and you trust your Tech Leads to make tactical calls
• Direct, low-formality communication style. Good communication skills in English, both written and verbal

Bonus points for:

• Experience in a regulated or compliance-heavy environment (fintech, banking, insurance, healthcare)
• Experience working in a pillar or tribe model with explicit role separation between EMs and Tech Leads
• Hands-on experience with distributed systems, microservices, or event-driven…