Head of Engineering

The Role

Enigma Labs is seeking a Head of Engineering to lead, architect, and scale the technical foundation of our platform. This role combines strategic leadership with hands-on technical ownership (think: 50% coding). You will define and execute the company's technical roadmap, ensure system reliability and scalability, and guide a small but highly capable team through rapid product evolution.

You will own critical architectural decisions, oversee infrastructure, and directly support the development of both consumer and enterprise-facing products. This position is central to maintaining the integrity and performance of systems used daily by a global user base, while preparing our technology for expansion into enterprise and government applications.

Working closely with the CEO and functional leads in Product, Data Science, Design, and Operations, you will translate high-level business goals into sound technical strategy. On the enterprise side, you will act as a thought partner in shaping how the platform supports advanced data integrations, research, and defense-related initiatives.

You will also drive urgency, efficiency and innovation within the team and broader business. We are looking for someone who intends to leverage AI throughout the engineering team to accelerate and assist lean development, automation, and rigorous operational standards. The ideal candidate is deeply curious about our data and how it connects to product outcomes, proactively identifying opportunities for technical improvement and using data-driven insight to inform decisions across engineering and product strategy.

About Us

Enigma Labs is on a mission to solve the most pressing mysteries in our skies. For the first time, we are harnessing the power of human networks paired with cutting edge technology. Our goal is to detect objects that evade sensors and are rapidly proliferating – whether that be foreign surveillance balloons, suspicious UAS, or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).

The first product we have shipped is a live mobile network enabling crowdsourcing – a radical new approach to air domain awareness. The app is growing rapidly with half a million users on the network and sharing activity in the skies. We provide a safe and frictionless space for people on the ground to report unusual aerial activity and sightings.

In 2024 alone, Commander Guillot of NORAD has revealed there were 350 incursions by unidentified craft over sensitive military sites in the U.S. Our real-time local alerts are a novel response to this escalating problem by providing on the ground reporting and corroboration. Our system has already been critical to incursions including the NJ drones in 2024. Enigma Labs is constantly learning from on-the-ground pioneers in places like Ukraine, who are rapidly responding to threats by building mobile apps and alert networks. As such, our solution is a dual use – it is both a valuable public utility and novel approach to aerial defense.

Today, the platform also ingests and fuses known object data to deconflict object sightings. Technologies in development include triangulation of object behavior using smartphone metadata, algorithmic scoring of aerial objects and events, and ML for object detection and identification.

At Enigma Labs, we recognize that a multidisciplinary approach is essential to our success, so we are committed to hiring from diverse fields and backgrounds. We are motivated by innovation, problem-solving, and a relentless pursuit of excellence, and are looking for hungry and entrepreneurial doers to join the team and help shape the future of air domain awareness.

Responsibilities

Engineering Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and develop a multidisciplinary engineering team spanning infra & backend, web, mobile, and ML/data functions (currently 5 engineers).
• Establish clear development processes and enforce engineering excellence while empowering flexibility, speed, and iterative development.
• Define and guide the technical direction of the company and clearly communicate priorities to leadership.
• Drive hiring, onboarding, and performance management while fostering a culture of accountability, ownership, and craftsmanship.
• Serve as the primary cross-functional partner for Growth, Product, Operations, and Sales leadership.
• Define and manage engineering budgets, including infrastructure and software costs.

Technical Strategy and Architecture

• Define and evolve Enigma's technical roadmap and architecture in alignment with long-term company goals.
• Design scalable, reliable systems and APIs that support continuous growth in both user engagement and data complexity.
• Oversee all aspects of infrastructure, data pipelines, and system security.
• Introduce and maintain AI-driven developer tools to enhance code quality, review processes, and deployment velocity.
• Balance rapid product iteration with technical debt reduction and long-term maintainability.

Hands-On Technical Execution

• Contribute directly to high-priority projects through coding, architecture reviews, and technical design.
• Lead incident response and postmortem processes, ensuring stability and operational resilience.
• Build and maintain strong observability, monitoring, and CI/CD systems.
• Prototype and validate new technologies and architectural approaches.
• Support and unblock engineers across all parts of the stack.

Cross-Functional and External Collaboration

• Collaborate closely with the CEO and senior leadership to align technical strategy with business objectives.
• Represent Engineering in discussions with investors, advisors, and enterprise partners.
• Support research and proposal efforts for government or defense opportunities.
• Surface insights from Enigma's data to inform future product directions and strategic initiatives.

Technical Environment

Our stack includes GCP, Cloudflare, Golang, Postgres, Redis, Python, , and Metabase, with mobile applications built in Swift and Kotlin.

We're technology-agnostic at our core — tools should serve the problem, not define it. The Head of Engineering will guide which technologies we adopt, evolve, or retire as the company grows. The ideal candidate has learned how to learn: capable of ramping quickly into unfamiliar domains, evaluating new technologies with clear judgment, and becoming an expert in anything necessary for a practical application. The priority is sound decision-making, adaptability, and long-term technical stewardship over any single language or framework.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience in production environments and at least 2 years of management and/or leadership, including experience at an early-stage startup.
• Strong technical foundation in backend or full-stack development, with deep understanding of distributed systems, production deployments, and data architecture.
• Proven ability to design, ship, and scale products.
• Experience leading small engineering teams and owning large technical domains.
• Expertise in infrastructure, CI/CD, observability, and operational excellence.
• Demonstrated ability to apply automation and AI to streamline engineering workflows.
• Thrives in ambiguity and can define problems expertly.
• Proven track record in defining technical direction, priorities, and structure in quickly evolving contexts while maintaining clarity and momentum.
• Strong communication skills and technical judgment.
• Ability to move fluidly between long-term architectural design and immediate problem-solving.
• Based in NYC or willing to relocate.
• Bias to action, entrepreneurial spirit, self starter who loves to jump in and fix things themselves; leading through execution
• Preferred
• Experience with geospatial, data-intensive, or real-time consumer products.
• Familiarity with machine learning, computer vision, and data pipelines.
• Exposure to defense, aerospace, law enforcement applications, dual-use technologies helpful but not required.
• Active or ability to obtain FCL security clearance.

Why Join Us

• Shape the architecture, systems, and culture of a company at the intersection of data, technology, and discovery ahead of business growth.
• Build software that reaches hundreds of thousands of users while advancing a new frontier in understanding aerial phenomena.
• Operate with autonomy and ownership in a small, mission-driven team.
• Competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and a dynamic work environment from our NYC headquarters.

How to Apply

Please send your résumé to