Head of Product Engineering

ABOUT WEROAD: CONNECTING PEOPLE, CULTURES, AND STORIES

Founded in 2017, WeRoad is a fast‑growing startup that is disrupting the travel industry in Italy, Spain, UK, Germany, France, Switzerland and the USA! With 200 team members and 4K Travel Coordinators, we're a community of travelers who turn every trip into a life‑changing experience. We connect like‑minded millennials and send them on adventures to 1000+ destinations worldwide.

We're on a mission to design and deliver experiences worth living and sharing, through rewriting the rules of the travel industry.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Job Title: Head of Product Engineering

Location: Full Remote or Hybrid (Milan)

Type of Contract: Permanent, full‑time

As Head of Product Engineering you'll lead four product engineering teams, covering our consumer website and frontend; the checkout, booking and payments experience; the internal operations platform; and the tools our tour coordinators and travel partners rely on — along with the Engineering Managers who run them: 20+ engineers and product people. You'll report to the CTPO and own how fast, how well, and how predictably we ship across every market.

Initially, this role will also directly manage the website and frontend team. Shaping the leadership of these teams — including developing or hiring the Engineering Manager who will ultimately run that team — is a core responsibility of the Head.

What you'll do

• Lead the five product engineering teams, managing their Engineering Managers and owning team structure and headcount.
• Own delivery of the product roadmap across web, checkout & payments, tour operations, and coordinator/partner platforms, translating company OKRs into quarterly plans.
• Work with the CTPO, Product, and Design on product and technical strategy, and with the Director of AI on AI engineering practices.
• Set and maintain standards for architecture, code quality, testing, reliability, and observability across the stack (Nuxt/Vue, NestJS, Laravel/PHP, Python, RabbitMQ, GraphQL/REST, GCP).
• Manage and develop Engineering Managers and senior engineers, run performance metrics and career frameworks, own hiring and onboarding, and keep teams healthy and collaborative.
• Manage cross‑team dependencies and shared platforms, and maintain incident response, postmortem, and technical‑debt processes.
• Report engineering health to the C‑Team: delivery throughput, reliability, and roadmap progress.

What you'll bring to the table

• 8+ years in software engineering, including 4+ years leading teams and managing other managers in an org of 20+ people.
• Experience delivering complex, high‑traffic consumer products in a scale‑up or high‑growth environment.
• Technical depth across modern web and backend stacks (JS/TS plus PHP and/or Node), microservices, and event‑driven architectures.
• People‑management experience: coaching EMs, setting priorities, and running autonomous teams.
• A track record of turning strategy into delivery, managed with data and metrics.
• Experience with AI‑assisted engineering (AI IDEs such as Cursor/Copilot and CLIs such as Claude Code) and driving its adoption across teams.
• Fluent English; comfortable in a fast‑paced, multi‑market, remote‑first environment.

You will love working at WeRoad if

• You dream big, aim higher, and push yourself beyond limits you didn't think possible. Challenges excite you, and you're hungry for the next win.
• You want to be part of a young, smart, and fun team that shares your passion for travel. You thrive in a community of bold thinkers and doers who challenge and inspire each other.
• You're an entrepreneur at heart, take responsibility from day one, and move fast to make things happen.
• You prefer adventure over routine and embrace the fast‑paced, ever‑changing ride of a scale‑up. You make decisions quickly, test, learn, and adapt — because growth comes from action.
• You believe in the power of people. Our WeRoaders and Travel Coordinators are at the core of everything we do, and you're eager to be part of something bigger.

What we can offer

• Performance‑based bonus – A discretionary annual variable bonus, based on performance and company results.
• A free WeRoad trip every year – Choose your dream destination with €1,400/year travel discount or travel even more as a Travel Coordinator.
• Trust‑based holidays – We believe performance is driven by impact, not by hours at a desk. You are encouraged to take the time you need to recharge, beyond contractual minimums, within shared guidelines.
• Opportunities to learn – We invest in your growth with training and learning opportunities.
• New parent support – €3,600/year for 3 years after birth or adoption (or prorated if your child is under 3 when you start at WeRoad).
• Extra benefits – Meal vouchers (€8/day – when applicable), a €1,000 bonus for your wedding or civil union, and a one‑off bonus when you hit 5 years with us.
• Fun – A vibrant co‑working space, team buildings and meet‑ups.
• Hybrid working – Flexible working, and we support you to work from your destination of choice up to 1 month per year.

WeRoad is an equal opportunity employer: we consider for employment all applicants, regardless of their race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, age, family status, political affiliation, disability, and any other legally protected characteristic.

#J-18808-Ljbffr