Head of Engineering (f/m/d)

About This Opportunity

We are representing a confidential fintech organization in their search for a Head of Engineering to lead a product tribe of 15 to 20 engineers in Berlin. This is a critical leadership role reporting to the CTO, combining deep people management with strong technical judgment. You will work as part of a tribe leadership trio alongside Product and Design leads, owning delivery outcomes, engineering velocity, and the development of your team.

This role requires both proven people leadership and current technical expertise. You will manage all engineers directly—no management layers beneath you—while also challenging system architecture, participating in technical decisions, and shaping roadmap feasibility with product leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead delivery and velocity for the tribe, ensuring the right problems are solved at high quality and speed
• Manage 15 to 20 engineers directly: hiring, onboarding, performance management, development, compensation recommendations, and retention decisions
• Provide technical judgment across squads, challenging estimates and architectural proposals from your engineering teams
• Collaborate with Product and Design leads in the tribe trio on roadmap planning, scope, timelines, and technical feasibility
• Establish and maintain operating rhythms for planning, estimation, tracking, and transparent delivery reporting
• Optimize capacity allocation, placing engineers on high-impact work and moving them between squads as priorities shift
• Align with peer engineering leads and platform owners to resolve shared-architecture questions and cross-tribe dependencies
• Build practices that enable a flat structure to function effectively at scale

What We're Looking For

• 4 to 6+ years in engineering management, with direct management of engineers at meaningful span—you have run hiring, performance reviews, and difficult conversations yourself
• Senior engineering background before moving into leadership, with current judgment on system design and architecture
• Strong systems design skills: you can evaluate architectures, identify failure points, propose alternatives, and assess realistic timelines
• Product partnership experience: you have shaped roadmaps through feasibility arguments and worked as a technical peer to product leadership
• Ability to manage structure at scale with no middle management layer—clear expectations, consistent feedback, visible delivery practices
• Quick reasoning in unfamiliar domains, contributing effectively before developing deep expertise
• Experience from environments with mature engineering practices: code review, testing, incident handling, functional planning and estimation
• Strong communication and alignment skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders

Particularly valuable:

• Background in AI products or financial/ERP systems
• Experience in flat or squad-based organizational models
• Familiarity with Tech Lead / Engineering Manager role splits

Please note: This role focuses on leadership and technical judgment, not individual contributor work. Tech Leads own implementation details and write code with their squads. Your technical contribution is architecture-level challenge, not daily coding. You will manage engineers directly with no management layer beneath you.

How We Work With You

Candidates apply through Get A Job.ai. Our talent team will conduct an initial screen to understand your background and confirm alignment with the role requirements. If there is a strong match, we will submit your profile to our client for consideration. Please do not attempt to contact the client directly—all communication and interview coordination will be managed through our recruiting team to ensure a structured and professional process.

Pay

Compensation details will be discussed during the screening process based on your experience and the client's budget for this role.

Equal Employment Opportunity: Get A Job.ai is committed to inclusive recruiting practices. We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds and work to ensure equitable access to opportunities.