I have been leading teams and I'd like to get back to software engineering

You're in an amazing position to be a very senior IC engineer at a hypergrowth startup.

You're probably a great programmer to have reached such a senior position, but you also you have tons of business context since you led engineering for the entire company.

This combination is very attractive to any company with lots of growth and trying to hire product-minded engineers with good judgment. James Hawkins, CEO of scale-up company PostHog, talks about exactly this here: The BIG Difference Between The Mindset of American And European Tech Workers

Since you were at a Series B company, I'm guessing the eng team had to have been a dozen (or several dozen) engineers -- very impressive! My recommendation:

• If possible, leverage the network of current/previous leaders at your company. They can likely advocate for you at the new company.
• If you know the investors of your current company, check if they can recommend any other portfolio companies that .
• Scout out series B/C/D startups where you'd be an especially good fit.

There are a lot of companies trying to hire from Taro. And engineers who could give you referrals. For referrals, I'd use https://www.jointaro.com/networking/. To get companies with companies I know about, reach out to me directly via email!

Rahul has a great answer with great pointers.

I want to underscore his point of business context: "but you also you have tons of business context since you led engineering for the entire company." Once you get a role of your liking, you'll be able to identify impactful work very quickly, which will make you a great engineer as well as an effective mentor and coach to rising engineers.

You might come across some hurdles in convincing some engineering leaders that you'd be a great SWE or TLM hire (over another tenured IC candidate) unless you've been in the code at work or outside.

They might also wonder about your motivation to switch back to IC. This is important because Head of Engineering can mean a lot of things. If your role already maps to a Director/Sr. Director/VP, you might be asked more questions :).

Not knowing more about your exact situation, I encourage you to get really clear with your intent and how you'll to convince them that you'll make a strong SWE. You might want to line up a SWE reference or two from your past IC life to vouch for you. Or perhaps the senior most IC at your current place can also be a reference.

You might know about this article already, but I want to surface it again for ideas on how to make your case for an IC role: The Engineer/Manager Pendulum.

PS: Rands Leadership Slack is another great place to source help on this front.

PPS: If you're a non-male, SheTO is a great network to join as there are folks in that network making a similar switch at this time.