Head of Engineering

Remote (UK-based) | Full-time | £110,180 + benefits

We’re looking for someone to lead the engineering team behind a national education platform, opening up curriculum data and safe AI to support brilliant teaching in every classroom.

Oak is a fully remote, mission-driven organisation offering high levels of flexibility, autonomy, and purpose. We’re a national not-for-profit organisation working in partnership with teachers to create high-quality, sequenced curriculum and lesson resources for pupils across all subjects and age groups.

Our culture has been independently recognised through:

• Flexa verified (93% overall score, including 95% for working hours and 97% for role modelling)

• Escape the City's Top 1% Employers – based on anonymous colleague reviews of culture, development, and impact

• Investors in People Gold - through external accreditation and colleague feedback

💡 About the Role

Oak is entering a critical new phase. Over the next three years, we will support the implementation of a revised national curriculum, deepen adoption of our digital products across schools, and play a leading role in shaping the safe and ethical use of AI in education.

We are now seeking a Head of Engineering to oversee our teams and technology that underpins this work.

This is a leadership role with responsibility for Oak’s engineering strategy and platform delivery. You will lead engineering teams to build and operate reliable, secure and scalable systems that support teachers at scale and enable innovation across the education sector.

You’ll work closely with product, design, data, teachers and content leaders to ensure our technology choices are grounded in real classroom needs, strong pedagogy and value for money, while also pushing forward what’s possible with the latest approaches and tools. You’ll empower teams to get solutions built and products and features shipped.

We welcome applications from candidates with senior engineering leadership experience across technology, digital or public service environments, including those who have not previously worked in education.

If you’re excited by the challenge of building dependable systems that quietly do the heavy lifting for teachers, and shaping how safe AI is used across the sector, we’d love to hear from you.

🔧 What You’ll Be Doing

• Develop and manage a high-performing engineering department, leveraging internal and/or external relationships.

• Lead engineering work delivering our product roadmap to a standard that is secure, scalable, highly available and accessible to the widest possible audience, and that meets Government Digital Service standards.

• Lead the technical architecture of our platform, aligned with the Head of Data's data infrastructure.

• Responsible for the continuous improvement of the standard, quality and velocity of Oak’s engineering practice.

• Manage the engineering budget (minimum 6 figures).

• Maintain specialist expertise in software engineering and be an authority across Oak and more widely across the sector.

• As a member of the Leadership Team, contribute to the strategy, planning and model the culture of the organisation.

• Work in cross-functional and product-oriented squads with colleagues from across the organisation, as required.

• Deputise for the Director of Engineering and take on other general responsibilities as required.

🌱 What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years holding responsibility for engineering leadership across a department.

• Experience of recruiting, developing and managing a high-performing engineering department.

• Experience of managing a 6-figure budget, including software licences, cloud infrastructure and contractor spend.

• Proven success building and running secure, scalable, highly available and accessible web applications to Government Digital Service or equivalent standards.  

• Experience owning the architecture of a comparable multi-product platform and evolving it as traffic and product grow.

• Exceptional standards of code quality and the ability to coach and mentor other engineers to achieve those standards.

• Familiarity with open data or open-source product development and/or collaborating with external partners and government bodies (desirable).

💛 Our Benefits

• 25 days annual leave, plus one extra day for each year of service (up to 28)

• Additional Oak closure days over Christmas/New Year

• 11% employer pension contribution (with no minimum employee contribution)

• A 36-hour working week, with half-days on Fridays or every other Friday off

• Fully remote working — we’ll support your home set-up and offer coworking options if preferred

• Twice-yearly in-person offsites to collaborate, connect, and have fun

• A culture that genuinely supports flexibility, autonomy, and trust

🌈 Inclusion and Belonging

We believe diverse teams build better products. We warmly welcome applicants from all backgrounds, particularly those who are underrepresented in the tech and education sectors.

We use the Applied recruitment platform to help reduce bias in our hiring process.

📌 Key Info

• Location: Remote, but you must be based in the UK with the legal right to work here

• Sponsorship: Unfortunately, we’re unable to offer visa sponsorship at this time

• Closing date: 23:59 on Sunday, 1 November 2026. We’ll be reviewing applications as they come in, and may close the role early

If this sounds like the kind of role and team where you could do your life’s best work, we’d love to hear from you.

👣 Next Steps

We aim to run a fair, inclusive process that helps people show what they can really do.

Stage 1: Apply (via Applied)

You’ll apply through the Applied platform. Your application will be scored anonymously against the published criteria and reviewed by more than one assessor.

Stage 2: Short screening interview

If you progress, you will be invited to a short screening interview during the week of 9th November.

Stage 3: Interview

A shortlist of candidates will be invited to a competency-based interview, assessed against the criteria set out in the job description, during the week of 16th November. This will also include a situational-based technical assessment.

We’ll share full details, timelines and support as you progress. We’re happy to make reasonable adjustments at any stage.

🤖 Use of AI in applications

You can use AI to help draft your answers, but remember, we are looking for your experiences and insights, not generic or AI-generated responses.

We score for specific, real examples and your own judgement. If your answers read like AI output or could describe anyone’s experience, they will score poorly.

We are receiving excellent responses to our job advertisements. This may lead us to close the role early, so if you are considering applying, then please get your application in early to avoid missing out.