{"id":445335,"url":"https://alion.io/job/wheely-director-of-engineering","title":"Director of Engineering","company":{"id":172529,"name":"Wheely","domain":"wheely.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/wheely","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":80,"open_postings":19,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.789,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":29,"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","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":160000,"max_usd":300000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":71},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-01T13:41:47Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-30","last_verified_at":"2026-10-28T13:18:48Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":149,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":148},"description":"About Wheely\nWheely is redefining premium transportation across major cities in Europe, the US, and the Middle East. We blend cutting-edge technology with the craft of five-star chauffeuring to deliver an experience trusted by more than 100,000 active riders and 1,200 corporate accounts.\nWe’re a profitable, fast-growing scale-up with $43M raised and over $100M in annual revenue. Having recently launched in New York City, we’re expanding rapidly across the US and EMEA. If you take pride in your craft and want to help shape the next chapter of our growth, we'd love to hear from you.\nAbout The Role\nWe're rebuilding Wheely to be the fastest and most reliable ride-hailing app on the planet - one where both the passenger app and the driver app stay responsive on a flaky signal in the back of an apartment building, keep working behind censorship firewalls, and don't drop the real-time guarantees a moving car depends on.\nWe're also adding something nobody in this category has built seriously: privacy as a product, not a compliance footnote.\nThis role owns the core that makes all of that possible: the platform, the infrastructure, the privacy primitives the rest of engineering builds on top of, and the internal agent harness that lets teams across the company automate work that used to need humans.\nYou'll inherit a mostly-Go codebase and a small group of strong engineers. You'll also inherit a genuinely open question on most of what matters. Is microservices the right end state, or did we default into it? How should a backend look in 2026 when AI has absorbed a large share of routine engineering work, when QA isn't a separate function, and when a small senior team paired with a few unusually strong grads can outship a 2019-style org several times its size?\nOur main engineering hub is in Cyprus. We're now building up London as a second hub, and this role is part of that - you'd be one of the first senior engineering leaders on the ground here, helping shape what London looks like as a location, who we hire into it, and what work belongs where.\nResponsibilities\nOwn the technical direction of the platform end to end - including the architectural questions that haven't been answered yet, like whether to keep moving toward microservices or reconsider.\nMake real-time work, end to end. Driver app especially (location, dispatch, ride state) all of it under adversarial network conditions.\nLead the privacy story on the engineering side - what's actually different about how data flows through our systems vs. every other ride-hailing company.\nOwn and grow the agent harness so other teams can wire AI into workflows that used to need people. Today it's Rust. Tomorrow's shape is yours.\nHelp build London as an engineering hub. That means hiring into it, deciding (with the rest of the leadership team) what work makes sense in London vs Cyprus, and setting the culture for a new office while staying tightly coupled to the main hub.\nRequirements\nYou have designed backend systems from scratch (not only maintained, scaled, or rewritten what someone else built). We'll spend real time in the interview on the trade-offs you made and why.\nReal-time systems experience at consumer scale.\nSeveral years of managing engineers, with hiring and firing calls you'd defend in detail. Total headcount matters less to us than the calibre and the outcomes.\nBased in London. We sponsor visas: you don't need to be in the UK today, you just need to be willing to move. Regular travel to our Cyprus hub expected, especially early on.\nWhat we offer\nOffice-based role in West London, four days a week with flexible start and finish times, plus one remote day of your choice\nEmployee stock options plan\nPrivate medical and dental insurance\nLife and critical illness cover\nLatest-generation MacBook Pro and 4k display\nMonthly credit towards Wheely journeys\nCycle to Work scheme\nProfessional development stipend\nRelocation support, including visa sponsorship and allowance\nAll of your personal information will be collected stored and processed in accordance with Wheely’s Candidate Privacy Notice","description_format":"text","description_chars":4102,"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":["Apple Macbook","Dental insurance","Professional development","Stock options"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Cyprus","iso":"CY","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Ride Hailing"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-06T07:41:49Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":8,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.285,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":148,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:1","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/wheely-director-of-engineering","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/wheely-director-of-engineering.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-28T14:41:35Z","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":19933,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-29T00:00:00Z"}},"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":172529},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=172529"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fwheely-director-of-engineering"},{"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%2Fwheely-director-of-engineering"},{"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%2Fwheely-director-of-engineering"},{"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/wheely-director-of-engineering\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fwheely-director-of-engineering"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":445335}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"wheely.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":445335},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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