Head of Engineering

Kraken is the operating system for utilities of the future. Built in-house at Octopus Energy, we took them to become the biggest supplier in the UK, and now we power energy companies and utilities around the globe - in 10 countries and counting, licensing software to giants like Origin Energy in Australia and Tokyo Gas in Japan. We’re on a mission to accelerate the renewable transition, and bring affordable green energy to the world.

We’ve reinvented energy products with smart, data driven tariffs to balance customer demand with renewable generation, and Kraken’s platform controls more than half of the grid-scale batteries in the UK. We’re driving the uptake of low carbon technologies like solar panels and heat pumps via our software for engineers in the field. Our platform allows our energy specialists to be the most productive in the industry, with our suite of AI tools making us pioneers in using ML and AI to make agents' lives easier and customers happier. We do it by hiring clever, curious, and self-driven people, enabling them with modern tools and infrastructure and giving them lots of autonomy.

Our ML team consists of ML, front-end and back-end engineers, so that we can rapidly prototype and get innovative tools in use at breakneck speed. 

We’ve had great success in using AI to bring better service to customers, but it’s just the beginning: we’re redefining the way that customer service works from the ground up. You’ll bring the next generation of AI-powered features to customer service at Kraken, redefining client’s businesses and bringing better, faster service to end customers.

Managing a team of genAI, Machine Learning and backend specialists, you will direct engineering efforts, work closely with the product lead to make sure that we’re building the right thing, and innovate at the pace required for this competitive market. Your team will build real products, not demos - and you’ll validate the value of these products at real scale. You’ll lead and shape a team that innovates and builds at speed, managing performance to make sure it’s the best of the best.

What you'll do

• Lead, mentor and inspire a high performance team of LLM, MLOps, backend and front end engineers
• Support product leadership in developing the product vision for Kraken’s AI powered customer service agents, using a deep understanding of the capabilities of AI agent systems and experimentation required
• Build agent systems using LLMs that are reliable first, solving problems for customers without compromising to deliver best-in-class customer service
• Engineer solutions that meet the customer where they are: omnichannel chatbots, voice agents, and beyond to solving problems proactively
• Customize LLMs to the energy industry and our clients, using deep industry data via Kraken’s end-to-end platform and leveraging techniques like GraphRAG, agentic workflows, finetuning, and reinforcement learning
• Design and build scalable test environments, benchmarking and evaluation frameworks to measure and optimize AI agent performance across billions of tasks.
• Build feedback mechanisms, including autonomous and with humans-in-the-loop that ensure that our systems are adaptive, intelligent, and improving with use.
• Own systems used in production across the globe, in multiple languages and at real scale, with tens of millions of interactions each month
• Support decision making of building-vs-buying parts of the tech stack, understanding where we should focus effort and where we should prioritize speed
• Lead the team in understanding AI advancements and their technical implications for the team

What you'll need

• Proven experience in leading, mentoring and inspiring high performance teams
• 2+ years experience building productionised Gen AI products beyond PoC and managing their usage at scale (thousands of users and millions of requests)
• Of particular interest are cutting-edge AI systems in customer service, for example experience with a realtime voice agent system with proven results.
• 5+ experience solving tough, ambitious problems with ML in production, with experience in systems that incorporate feedback mechanisms to autonomously improve, and the monitoring around them
• A big plus: strong experience with ML ops systems in practice, enabling research and experimentation for a high agility data-driven team that operates on the cutting edge
• A deep technical understanding of diverse technologies and techniques to adapt LLMs to domains (like advanced RAG techniques, tool calling, finetuning and RL) and technologies specifically relevant to customer service agents (like speech-to-speech technologies)
• A keen interest in Gen AI and classic ML, understanding of emerging trends and research, and experience aligning and applying this to business objectives

It would be great if you had

• Experience working with large codebases and collaborating with multiple engineering teams in large companies
• Experience as a thought leader of engineering excellence internally and externally, including conference or meetup talks

If this sounds like you then we'd love to hear from you.

Are you ready for a career with us? We want to ensure you have all the tools and environment you need to unleash your potential. Need any specific accommodations? Whether you require specific accommodations or have a unique preference, let us know, and we'll do what we can to customise your interview process for comfort and maximum magic!

Studies have shown that some groups of people, like women, are less likely to apply to a role unless they meet 100% of the job requirements. Whoever you are, if you like one of our jobs, we encourage you to apply as you might just be the candidate we hire. Across Octopus, we're looking for genuinely decent people who are honest and empathetic. Our people are our strongest asset and the unique skills and perspectives people bring to the team are the driving force of our success. As an equal opportunity employer, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attribute. Our commitment is to provide equal opportunities, an inclusive work environment, and fairness for everyone.