Head of Engineering and Product

Head of Engineering & Product

Location: Kyiv, Kyiv city, Ukraine, Moscow, Moscow, Russia, Ukrainka, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, Ukrainsk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, Ukrainets, Bryansk Oblast, Russia, Russia

Workplace: remote

Employment Type: full

Description

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/mindfriend/

Website: mindfriend.com/

MindFriend

• Remote (UK/EU hours)
• Full-time
• 
  
  

Were looking for our senior engineering and product leader who will take MindFriend safely to launch and build the platform, and the team, that come after.

MindFriend is a mental-health marketplace connecting people with verified, licensed clinicians for online therapy: search, booking, payments, and live video, audio and chat sessions in one place. The platform is built and largely working, with a capable lead developer and a team. Were now bringing in the senior leader who will set the engineering bar, decide when were ready to launch, and grow both the platform and the team from there with a level of ownership only the earliest team members ever get.

This role carries more weight than most engineering jobs. We handle sensitive health data and host live therapy sessions, so reliability and security arent features they are the trust the entire category depends on. The person who gets this right will have real authority to do it properly, and will help shape what MindFriend becomes.

A word of honesty

This is a founding-team role at an early-stage company, which means it is hands-on. You will get into the code. You will run the QA passes yourself. You will test a video session on a bad connection at 9pm because a launch depends on it. You will make calls with incomplete information and live with them. Youll lead a small team and a freelance bench but youll lead by doing, not just directing. If you want a purely strategic seat with people beneath you to execute, this is the wrong role. If you want to own the hardest, most consequential technical problems in the company and see them through, read on.

Requirements

What youll be responsible for

• The launch decision setting the readiness bar, and holding launch until its met.
• Reliability of live video, audio and chat sessions on a users old laptop and a clinicians poor wifi, not just a developers machine.
• Security and privacy of sensitive health data the controls that keep us defensible, and an independent security review before we go live.
• End-to-end quality of the booking-and-payments flow, including the failure paths most teams skip.
• The product direction after launch what we build next, in what order, and why.
• Leading and growing the engineering and product team.
  
  

What success looks like

In Your First Weeks — To Launch

• Own and close out the launch readiness bar; get MindFriend live in its first market with confidence, not crossed fingers.
• Pass an independent security review with critical findings remediated before go-live.
• Prove the full booking-to-session flow end-to-end, including every failure path, across real devices and networks.
  
  

In Your First 6–12 Months

• Turn a freelance-built platform into a maintainable, well-owned codebase with a team to match.
• Establish a sane delivery cadence and the engineering and product processes well scale on.
• Set the post-launch roadmap and start shipping against it.
  
  

Who you are

• 8+ years building software, with senior or lead engineering experience and youve carried real product responsibility, not just executed someone elses spec.
• Youve shipped a consumer product that takes real payments and handles sensitive personal data, to production and through real users.
• Youve worked somewhere the security and data bar is real health-tech, fintech, or similar. Youre not learning why it matters here.
• You can run a security review and stand up the controls behind it yourself, not just brief someone else to.
• Hands-on operator first, leader second: you lead through doing.
• You work directly and candidly with a non-technical founder.
  
  

A bonus, not a requirement: youve been part of an early-stage or founding team before and know how to operate without much process; marketplace or telehealth experience; multi-jurisdiction products; or having taken a product through SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / GDPR.

Why this role matters

In a category built on trust, the technical decisions are the business. Whether a session holds, whether data stays safe, whether the platform feels solid thats what earns the trust everything else depends on. As a founding-team member youll build the foundation MindFriend grows on, and shape the company from its first day live. This is a rare chance to own the technical heart of a company at the moment it matters most

Benefits

What we offer

A founding-team seat working directly to the founder, with real authority and real ownership of the problems that matter most. A product thats already built and a launch to drive, not a blank page. Competitive cash compensation plus equity, reflecting the seniority and ownership of the role. And a mission worth the work making trustworthy mental-health support easier to find.

How to apply

Write to us one short story: a product you took to launch that handled payments or sensitive data what you were responsible for, and what nearly went wrong. We value substance over polish; tell us what youve built, not just where youve worked.