About Kayana

Kayana is one of the fastest-growing companies, empowering small and medium-sized businesses with cutting-edge technology to compete with larger enterprises in the ordering and payments space. As a disruptive force in the industry, we provide everything from essential point-of-sale systems to advanced solutions like self-service kiosks, enabling brands to scale and succeed.

Our mission is simple: to help businesses thrive through innovative technology . With operations across the USA, UK, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East, Kayana is proud to foster an inclusive and dynamic culture. Every employee is supported with a personalized development plan, offering clear and achievable career paths for long-term growth.

About You

As Head of Engineering, you'll be the operational backbone of our development team. You'll work closely with our CTO — who remains the technical visionary and architect — to translate strategy into delivery. This is a player-coach role: you'll lead people and process while remaining hands-on with code.

This role exists because we're scaling. Our CTO's strengths lie in deep technical architecture and product direction. Your strengths will complement that — you bring the structure, cadence, and team leadership that turns great ideas into shipped software.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership

• Own the day-to-day management of the engineering team — 1:1s, performance conversations, and professional development
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement
• Support hiring decisions and help onboard new engineers effectively
• Act as the first escalation point for team blockers, conflicts, or resourcing issues

Delivery & Process

• Lead sprint planning, stand-ups, retrospectives, and release processes
• Own engineering delivery timelines and communicate progress clearly to stakeholders
• Identify and remove blockers before they become delays
• Maintain a healthy, well-prioritised backlog in collaboration with product

Engineering Excellence

• Introduce and embed best practices: CI/CD, code review standards, testing culture, documentation
• Drive developer productivity — tooling, workflow automation, and reducing friction
• Champion code quality without slowing delivery
• Contribute directly to the codebase as a player-coach — shipping code alongside the team

CTO Partnership

• Work closely with the CTO to translate technical vision into actionable roadmaps
• Keep the CTO informed without burdening them with operational noise
• Be a trusted sounding board on architecture decisions and technical trade-offs

What We’re Looking For

Experience

• 5–8 years of software engineering experience, ideally full-stack or relevant to our product stack (EPOS, SaaS, payments, mobile)
• 2–4 years leading or managing engineering teams of 3–10 people
• Proven track record of improving engineering delivery — not just speed, but quality and predictability
• Comfortable working in a scaling startup or SME environment

Leadership & Communication

• Strong people manager — empathetic, direct, and consistent
• High emotional intelligence; able to build trust quickly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Comfortable working alongside a strong technical CTO — collaborative, not territorial
• Excellent written and verbal communicator

Technical Skills

• Hands-on engineering capability — you can still read, write, and review code at a meaningful level
• Solid understanding of modern software development practices: Agile, CI/CD, version control, code review
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and SaaS architecture principles
• Experience with tools like Jira, Linear, GitHub, or equivalent

Why Join Us?

At Kayana, you’ll be part of a fast-growing global company where your contributions will make a direct impact.

We offer:

• A clear path for career growth.
• The opportunity to set up and shape the compliance framework for a growing international business.
• A supportive and collaborative environment where your success is celebrated.

Starting salary: INR 250,000 per month