Director of Engineering

Remote (UK-based) | Full-time | £123,969 + benefits

We're looking for an engineering leader to run the team that builds the technology behind Oak.

Three out of four schools in England now use our curriculum resources, and we're in the middle of our most ambitious work yet: rebuilding those resources for the refreshed national curriculum, and opening up the curriculum itself as a graph, served through a public API and connectors that AI tools already call when they help teachers plan. Other organisations build on what we run, so this is public infrastructure. The engineering behind it has to be excellent, and it has to be led well.

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

This is a senior leadership role with responsibility for Oak’s engineering strategy, technical architecture and platform delivery. You'll lead our engineers, set the technical direction, and own how we build, including how we run what others depend upon: fast enough to deliver, safe enough to trust, and always in service of teachers and pupils rather than technology for its own sake. You'll do it in a small, high-performing public body where engineering sits alongside product, curriculum and schools, not in a silo.

Want to know more about how we build our products? Our Engineering Substack shares how we build AI and data tools for education, including the decisions, trade-offs and lessons we've learned along the way. Read Oak's Engineering Substack - https://engineering.thenational.academy/

We care as much about how you lead as what you've built. We want someone who grows the people around them, makes the hard calls on trade-offs and risk honestly, and gets the best from a team by holding it to a high standard. If that's you, read on.

What You’ll Be Doing

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

• Manage the Engineering department budget (minimum of 7-figures).

• Accountable for the department's delivery against division and organisation-wide KPIs.

• Set and lead Oak’s technical direction, ensuring secure, scalable and high-performing platforms aligned with organisational and product priorities and public sector digital standards.

• Embed engineering excellence, strong SDLC practice and continuous improvement, ensure compliance with relevant standards including GDS, GDPR and WCAG 2.2 AA, and give the board clear assurance on technical risk. 

• Lead the implementation of data-intensive and emerging technologies (including AI/ML), ensuring production-ready systems and compliance with Oak’s technical and safety requirements.

• Member of the Senior Leadership Team.

• Lead the strategy and 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 CEO and take on other general responsibilities as required.

What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years’ experience overseeing engineering or technical capabilities of a department or division.

• Experience of being part of a senior or wider leadership team.

• Experience in recruiting, developing and managing a high-performing department

• Experience in managing a 6-figure budget and ensuring value for money.

• Extensive experience delivering secure, scalable, high-quality digital services in production environments.

• Experience implementing and operating data-intensive or emerging technologies (e.g., AI/ML), ensuring safe, reliable and responsible deployment.

• Experience leading the evolution of engineering systems over time, including evaluating new technologies, scaling cloud-based services, and ensuring high availability, CI/CD maturity and long-term platform resilience.

• Experience having deployed production ready AI technology (desirable).

• Experience in the creation of open source technology (desirable)

The successful candidate will have a desire to contribute across all areas to ensure Oak's success. You will be comfortable moving quickly and with agility, and be confident working with a range of digital systems (including proprietary ones, as required). You will continually look for ways that the team can keep getting better. You will be excellent at working as part of a remote team, building relationships and managing your time effectively.

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.

Next Steps

Apply through this page. We'll ask you two short written questions as part of your application, so you can tell us about a real decision you've led and how you'd lead engineering through the shift to AI.

Our process is a little different from most, by design. We're more interested in what you've genuinely done than in how polished you sound, so later stages build on your earlier answers and we ask you to show your thinking rather than perform it.

If you progress, we'll ask you to record a short voice note on a question we'll send you at that point, and we assess those by comparing candidates against each other rather than scoring in isolation, which we find fairer. Two rounds of interview follow.

We'll tell you where you stand at each stage, and give you honest feedback whatever the outcome. If you need any adjustment at any point, tell us and we'll sort it.

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.

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.

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

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, 29 November 2026. We’ll be reviewing applications as they come in, and may close the role early, so if you are considering applying, then please get your application in early to avoid missing out.