Unbox is building the toolkit to power the social commerce revolution. We’re helping merchants and creators supercharge their growth on platforms like TikTok Shop and YouTube Shopping, leveraging the power of shoppable content to drive sales with a new generation of consumers. Our solutions will help merchants and creators across the social commerce lifecycle, leveraging machine learning, automation and continuous optimisation to unlock sustainable, profitable growth in a market forecast to reach $6tn by 2030.

Founded by two former TikTok execs, we’ve taken on investment from some fantastic backers with experience spanning tech, ecommerce, media, social and AI. Since launching, we’ve established design partnerships with top tier global merchants as we build our initial solution set, and are looking for a talented, motivated Head of Engineering to join our growing team.

About the role

We’re looking for an exceptional Head of Engineering, with deep, hands-on experience in AI & ML, who can build and lead a team of high-calibre engineers to bring our product to market. Working alongside Unbox’s co-founders as a member of the leadership team, you’ll transform our MVP into a world-class product that shapes the future of social commerce.

We’re seeking someone who is excited by emerging AI / ML technologies and their application to complex, data-heavy problems, who can support a team of data scientists & ML engineers to solve thorny customer challenges. Ideally, you have experience collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to build a world-class product; and the experience and expertise necessary to support rapid scaling of our back-end infrastructure. As well as excellent communication skills, we’re looking for someone who has proven their leadership skills and is ready to take them to the next level in a high-growth environment, with the ability to attract, hire and retain best-in-class talent.

What you’ll be doing

• Own and shape the technology vision: Define and execute the product roadmap, ensuring our architecture scales with growth.

• Attract, build & grow a high-calibre engineering team: Hire, mentor, and retain top-tier AI, ML, and software engineers, building a culture of technical & executional excellence.

• Architect and scale our product infrastructure: Support our team as they build and optimise the ML pipelines, data architecture, and real-time AI inference systems that power our product.

• Translate AI-driven insights into a beautiful product experience: Work with product, design, and front-end teams to turn complex data into an intuitive, high-impact front-end for our customers.

• Drive AI innovation and automation: Identify and implement emerging AI/ML advancements (e.g., multimodal AI, AI agents) that can support merchants to unlock meaningful value from social commerce

• Ensure technical scalability and reliability: Build a robust, scalable, and efficient infrastructure that can grow from our initial design partners to enterprise-scale customers.

• Shape our engineering culture and operating mode: Set and enforce best practices in architecture, security, DevOps, and AI deployment to build a best-in-class engineering function.

• Work with our co-founders to develop and execute on Unbox’s vision: Collaborate closely with founders, product, and commercial teams to align technology and the product roadmap with our business goals and long-term strategy.

• Represent Unbox’s technology externally: Engage with investors, customers, and industry partners to share our technical vision, capabilities, and differentiation.

What we’re looking for

• AI/ML expertise

  • Deep understanding and appreciation of AI / ML technologies and their application to data-heavy customer problems, ideally in video, eCommerce or adjacent spaces

  • Recent experience building and deploying ML models in production, scaling data pipelines, AI-driven applications, or training LLMs / multimodal models for real-time or batch processing

  • Excited by cutting-edge solutions such as (for example) multimodal AI models for video understanding, foundation models for vision and speech processing, and AI agents for autonomous decision-making

• Engineering & product leadership

  • Experience working with early stage teams (including front-end/full-stack engineers, UI/UX specialists, and product designers) to build a scaleable, customer-facing product from an MVP, prototype or research-stage system

  • Understanding of how to translate AI-driven insights from structured data into compelling, intuitive customer experiences which drive repeatable value

  • Experience building robust architecture, systems, data pipelines and customer-facing products from initial concept to meaningful scale

• Strategic & leadership skills

  • Excellent communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex technical subjects to non-technical stakeholders, including customers and investors

  • Track record of hiring, leading and supporting high-calibre AI/ML & engineering talent in fast-paced, high-uncertainty environments

  • Deep curiosity about emerging AI/ML trends and how they can be applied to real-world commercial challenges, with an ability to balance AI innovation with commercial realities

What we offer

• Equity: A meaningful equity stake in a high-growth startup with incredible backers

• Impact: An opportunity to have huge impact in shaping the product, engineering culture & company vision

• Autonomy: Be part of a small, agile team shaping a new product and driving the company forward

• Growth: Plenty of opportunity for career progression & skills development in a fast-moving environment