{"id":1529637,"url":"https://alion.io/job/hadean-engineering-manager-populai","title":"Engineering Manager - populAI","company":{"id":172254,"name":"Hadean","domain":"hadean.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/hadean","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Teamtailor","truth_index":null},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":86000,"max_usd":188000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":59},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Node JS","optional":false},{"name":"React.js","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-22T15:01:30Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-22","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T09:13:13Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":23,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":23},"description":"At Hadean, we are building the next generation of defence technology. As a key player in the UK’s defence tech ecosystem, our world-leading software is trusted by defence organisations and militaries worldwide.\nWe specialise in AI-powered digital wargaming and Command & Control systems that help users understand complexity, make better decisions, and operate at scale. Joining Hadean means working on technology with real-world impact, alongside a team that is driven to push the limits of what’s possible.\nThe Team:\npopulAI is the simulation that makes continent-scale defence training feel like the real world. It fills a scenario with the pedestrians, traffic, shipping, aircraft, satellites and critical national infrastructure that trainees would face in reality, and it reacts to their decisions with the emergent chaos of real people and systems. Without it, an exercise is little more than a map overlay.\nAt its core populAI is a C++ simulation engine driving the behaviour and decision-making of huge numbers of actors. A custom distribution framework partitions that simulation across a compute cluster while keeping it coherent. A TypeScript/React front end and Node.js services put it in the hands of Simulation Operators. The team is also bringing LLM-backed capabilities into the engine: natural language control, richer actor generation and simulated social media.\nThe team is cross-functional, with Software, QA and DevOps Engineers, including seasoned simulation specialists. It ships into live customer exercises, demonstrators and integration hackathons to give a tight feedback loop on the work it’s delivered.\nThe Role:\nAs Engineering Manager for populAI, you will own the team's people leadership and delivery. You will create the conditions for a highly capable, multidisciplinary team to do its best work. That means setting clear expectations, developing individuals, removing blockers, and turning product priorities into reliable execution. You'll partner closely with the Product Manager and the team's technical leadership, and you'll pull in customer and business context from Field Engineering and senior stakeholders.\nThis role is deliberately weighted towards people, delivery and product partnership. You will lead the people and own the output, drawing on deep specialists for architecture and implementation decisions. A strong engineering foundation is still essential, though. You'll need enough technical context across the stack to earn credibility, understand performance, ask incisive questions and give candid, evidence-based feedback.\nKey Responsibilities:\nOwn delivery end-to-end for populAI - turning product goals into plans the team can execute and commitments stakeholders can rely on, and renegotiating early when they can't.\n\nLine-manage a multidisciplinary team: set expectations, give direct feedback, hold real performance and development conversations, and grow the next set of technical leaders.\n\nStay hands-on. Pick up delivery work when the pressure demands it, and when you need first-hand understanding of the codebase and the process you are trying to improve.\n\nOwn hiring for the team - define the profile, run the process, and make the case for the headcount the roadmap will need before it becomes a blocker.\n\nPartner with the Product Manager to understand the commercial environment, challenge assumptions, negotiate scope and timeline, and argue for the technical investment that keeps future delivery possible.\n\nWork with the team's technical lead and senior specialists on technical direction, making sure design and architecture decisions get made and hold up against what is coming next.\n\nShape the environment your team works in rather than just operating inside it, pulling customer and business context in from Product, Field Engineering and senior stakeholders to ensure alignment and support team autonomy.\n\nSkills, Knowledge and Experience:\nYou have led and line-managed a software engineering team, and can point to what you improved for the people and for the delivery.\n\nYou want to manage. Engineering management is your craft, not the next rung after senior engineer.\n\nYou have partnered with Product as an equal to shape priorities and push back on scope, not simply as a backlog administrator.\n\nYou have handled the hard parts of underperformance, conflict, ambiguity, and telling senior people things they might find uncomfortable to hear.\n\nYou have experience working on behavioural or agent-based simulation of people, crowds or vehicles (e.g. game AI, VFX crowd simulation, industrial human behaviour simulation, or defence CGF).\n\nYou have experience with systems languages (ideally C++) for performance-sensitive, real-time applications.\n\nAbility to obtain and maintain UK Security Vetted status to at least SC level.\n\nWhat will help you stand out:\nYou have grown a team rather than inherited one - hired into it, shaped it, and developed people into more senior roles.\n\nExperience delivering data-intensive, real-time, distributed or mission-critical products.\n\nFamiliarity with defence, military modelling and simulation, or other regulated and security-conscious environments.\n\nExperience leading a product or team through modernisation, migration from legacy technology, or a significant change in product direction.\n\nA track record of building effective Engineering Manager / technical lead partnerships, or mentoring other managers.\n\nYou want to be in the room where the product meets its users - travelling to deployments, hackathons and industry events, and turning what you see there into better decisions.\n\nJob Benefits \n\nWe make Hadean an awesome place to work with competitive benefits…\n\nHybrid working with 1 day per week in our fantastic office in Shoreditch, London\n\nPrivate Health Insurance\n\nEnhanced pension scheme\n\nEnhanced parental leave\n\n3 extra days off at Christmas (on top of our standard 25)\n\nL&D budget\n\nRegularly scheduled socials\n\nShare options\n\nA Place For Everyone\nWe believe diversity drives innovation and for that reason we strongly encourage those from all backgrounds to apply for roles at Hadean. We are an equal opportunity employer and aim to build a workforce that is truly representative of the communities in which we operate and our clients.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6271,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Health insurance","Hybrid work","Parental leave","Stock options"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Military","National Security","Homeland Security"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-30T15:52:30Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"GB","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"Licensed UK visa sponsor (Skilled Worker)","filings_12m":null,"filings_prev_12m":null,"green_card_filings_12m":null,"median_offered_wage_usd":null,"route":"Skilled Worker","cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-16T06:21:30+00:00","sources":["UK Home Office: register of licensed sponsors (workers)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":57,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.754,"p_room":0.75,"age_days":23,"expected_fill_days":30,"reasons":["conf:2","win:late"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/hadean-engineering-manager-populai","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/hadean-engineering-manager-populai.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-16T10:42:44Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":9241,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-17T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":172254},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=172254"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fhadean-engineering-manager-populai"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fhadean-engineering-manager-populai"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fhadean-engineering-manager-populai"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/hadean-engineering-manager-populai\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fhadean-engineering-manager-populai"}]}