Head of Engineering - Web Platform team

About Pallon

At Pallon, a spin-off from ETH Zurich, we’re creating AI that automatically detects defects in sewer inspection videos and advises cities on when & how to fix them. By providing more precise, objective data, we aim to fix wastewater leaks, reduce CO2 emissions, and prevent urban flooding. Our mission is to make cities more sustainable and resilient.

Responsibilities & team structure

In this role, you’ll join the Leadership team and build a clear engineering vision, strategy, and culture together with the web platform team. The web platform team currently consists of five Software Engineers, building a highly interactive web platform for both internal users and external clients.

You will be responsible for growing our team while ensuring high-quality delivery. The main focus will be on the web-platform team in collaboration with our Product Managers & Designers, for whom you will also build out effective processes for collaboration.

Your initial responsibilities canroughly be split as follows, but we anticipate you to be fluid and adapt:

• 40%Delivery: Collaborate closely with the engineering function, drive the development, set priorities, and drive & facilitate technical decisions.

• 20%Being Hands-on: Be hands-on, help the team design & develop our technical architecture & infrastructure, and stay up to date on the code base that your team maintains.

• 40%People: Build a high-performing & diverse team, develop our engineers further, and foster the right culture that attracts other great talent.

Exciting growth stage & Challenges

We're a fast-growing company of currently 30 people and the challenges you will face can be demanding and diverse. We are looking for a technologist and a people advocate who can:

• Bring order to "startup chaos" and help the team achieve ambitious goals

• Double & develop the web platform team within a year

• Build a strong engineering culture while integrating all the new joiners and growth changes effectively

• Make clearly reasoned decisions fast, with some degree of uncertainty

• Solve complex problems regardless of limited resources

Requirements

For a successful application, we recommend the following requirements:

• You bring a successful track record of doubling, developing, and managing software engineering teams

• You joined early and experienced high growth in a company, e.g. scaled from five to 20+ engineers in less than three years

• You facilitated between individuals, teams, and management to reach a common goal

• You worked as a software engineer yourself on a complex technical product, ideally web applications

• You understand technical products and best practices for development teams

• You are located in Europe and if not in Zurich willing to travel 2+ times per year to Zurich

Optional

The following are not required for you to apply, however, they do add extra value:

• Experience with setting or changing organisational structure

• Experience with engineering teams working on B2B SaaS products

• Experience with our tech stack

• Experience with machine learning

Our tech stack

We do not require experience in these exact technologies

• Frontend: Typescript, MobX, React, WebGL, Canvas

• Backend: Python, NodeJS, Typescript, Postgres, Django

• Infrastructure: Kubernetes, Docker

• Analytics: DBT, BigQuery, Metabase

Benefits & company culture

As a part of Pallon, you will:

• Contribute to a positive impact on society and the environment

• Develop a novel product that changes a whole industry

• Work in a stimulating and fast-paced environment

• Be part of a motivated, smart, fun, and supportive team

• Own a part of Pallon and have a part in our success with our Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP)

• Work for the Underworld, not the Devil: exploring sewers virtually and in real life during our Pallon offsite

• Work from home or enjoy access to our beautiful office space located in Zürich

How we interview 

• Respect your time: we keep interviews short to value your time

• Real problems: all questions are based on real problems we had to solve. We do not make you jump through hoops that are unrelated to the work you will be doing.

• Get to know you: we want to get to know you as a person to understand if we are the right team for you.

Our interview process

1. Phone Screen

2. Leadership Interview

3. Technical Interview

4. Onsite Interview (full day in our Zurich office)

Inclusion statement

At Pallon, we highly value equality of opportunity and inclusivity, and we would like to particularly encourage women and candidates from under-represented backgrounds to apply, even if you don’t match 100% of the requirements.