VP Engineering

Position Title: VP of Engineering

Reports to: CEO (interim)

Location: UK, Remote

Contract Type: Full-Time, Permanent

About BibliU

BibliU is an award-winning, technology-led B2B company transforming the $65bn educational content industry. With a 90% CAGR the past 5 years, we are just getting started. We've cracked the code on Day 1 access to affordable digital course materials for students, while delivering comprehensive campus store solutions that foster human relationships, and increase our stickiness in the world of AI.

The result? Measurable impact: 10% higher student retention, 1-point GPA increases, and partnerships with 170 universities serving 600,000 students each year.

We've fundamentally changed how universities procure, distribute, and manage learning content. We partner with 4,000+ publishers, including Pearson, Oxford University Press, and Wiley to deliver content to universities, and provide rich engagement data and interactive tools like quizzes that help students actually learn.

Here's what makes our story compelling:

Founded in late 2015 as an Oxford University spin out, we've grown explosively with 90% CAGR over the last five years, including 65% in FY25, reaching $100m in annual revenue. Our Series B raised $23m led by Nesta Impact Investments (with Guinness Asset Management, Stonehage Fleming, and Oxford Sciences Enterprises). In late 2023, we acquired Texas Book Company (now 'BibliU Campus') to become the only fully vertically integrated player in the market, driving US organic growth which now represents 90% of our business.

We're hungry for more. We're actively building our M&A pipeline as we compete head-to-head against legacy bricks-and-mortar providers to improve the faculty and student experience while boosting the financial sustainability of universities.

Our culture is collaborative, high-growth, and agile. You’ll join an experienced and motivated executive team with backgrounds from Instructure (Canvas) and other successful edtech companies with exit experience. We operate as a distributed team across the UK and US, with offices in London.

Role Overview

BibliU is hiring a VP Engineering to lead and grow its engineering function. This role owns team leadership, engineering standards, technical governance, security posture, and delivery against the product roadmap.

The engineering organisation today is about 15 engineers across application and platform, primarily full stack TypeScript on AWS, with 1-2 managers but otherwise a fairly flat team structure. You'll inherit a function that has been through a period of change, and is in the middle of changing how software gets built.

The first six months are about earning the team's trust, getting delivery predictable, and landing AI-assisted development as a standard part of how the team works rather than scattered individual use. Beyond that, this is a build job: growing the team as the business grows, setting the architecture direction for the next stage, and taking BibliU's platform from $100m revenue to what comes after.

It is expected that product and engineering will sit under a single leader longer term, so you'll spend your time on engineering rather than on cross-functional alignment. 

What Success Looks Like in year one

• The team is stable, growing, and the engineering managers are developing under you.
• Security posture is documented, owned and defensible, and customer security reviews are routine rather than fire drills.
• Availability, performance and incident metrics are improving.
• Delivery is predictable, with an honest roadmap and a release process the team trusts.
• AI-assisted development is measurably in use across the team, under agreed review and quality standards, with quality and security metrics improved against the baseline set in month one.
• Multiple engineering workflows have materially changed, with the before/after evidenced.
• Engineering standards, architecture decisions and technical debt are documented, and there's a credible architecture plan for the next stage of scale.

What We Are Looking For

Must have

• Significant experience leading software engineering or application development functions at VP, Director or CTO level.
• A track record of leading teams through change.
• Demonstrated accountability for delivery of complex web and mobile applications, including release governance.
• Experience managing engineering teams and technical leads.
• Full stack TypeScript and AWS experience is required.
• Track record of owning application security: secure coding practice, vulnerability management, audit and customer security review.

Good to have

• Experience implementing development governance, DevOps practice, CI/CD and quality assurance standards.
• Proven ability to manage technical risk and align engineering output with commercial objectives, and to report both credibly to senior leadership.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architecture and modern development frameworks. 
• A considered, practical position on AI-assisted development: tooling, guardrails, review, and how to measure real gains.
• Experience in SaaS, EdTech, FinTech or other product-led digital environments.
• Knowledge of cybersecurity standards and secure coding practices, and of the certifications customers ask about.
• Familiarity with international product deployments and multi-region infrastructure.
• Exposure to data-driven product optimisation and analytics frameworks.
• Experience in a resource-constrained scale-up, where pragmatism and sequencing matter more than ideal solutions.

Benefits

Our benefits are all aimed at supporting a healthy work-life balance and cultivating a company culture where you can bring your whole, human self to work.

Here's what we offer:

• 🌴 35 days holiday per year (excluding public holidays!) - yep, that’s not a typo!
• 🎂 Your birthday off.
• 🌱 12 scheduled company wellness Fridays off per year.
• ❤️ Enhanced maternity & paternity allowance.
• ⏰ Flexible working hours - we’re a remote team spread across the US and UK.
• 💻 Work-from-home allowance to help you set up your dream WFH station.
• 🚴 Cycle-to-work scheme (UK).
• 🛟 Life Insurance up to 4 x salary .
• ❤️ Private health insurance.
• 👁️ Annual eye test and up to £100 towards frames for glasses required for DSE work.
  

We strongly encourage candidates of all different backgrounds, experiences and identities to apply. Each new hire is an opportunity for us to bring in a different perspective and BibliU is committed to building an inclusive and supportive workplace where everyone can do rewarding work.

Please note: We do not work with external recruiters/recruitment agencies. This position will be filled directly by BibliU and we kindly request that external recruiters/recruitment agencies refrain from submitting candidates for this role.