Head of Engineering (d/f/m)

Job description

We are looking for an experienced and people-first Head of Engineering (d/f/m) to lead our Engineering Manager community within the Consumer Orientation & Specification (COS) cluster at mobile.de. This is a newly created senior leadership role — born from the growth of our Consumer engineering organization, which now spans 5 Engineering Managers, 7 cross-functional product teams, and approximately 50 engineers.

You will report directly to the Head of Technology (Consumer Area) and become the primary people leader for all Engineering Managers in COS. Through them, you proactively shape the culture, delivery capability, and team health of one of mobile.de's most user-facing engineering organizations. You are not just a manager of managers — you are a multiplier: someone who raises the bar for what great engineering leadership looks like, co-creates the organizational strategy with your Head of Technology, and then owns its execution end-to-end.

You will work in close partnership with the Principal Engineer for the Consumer Area, who owns technical direction and architectural alignment. Together, you form the senior leadership duo of the COS engineering organization: you own the people and delivery dimension; they own the technical dimension. Neither works without the other.

As a leader of leaders, you are expected to be a visible role model in AI adoption and AI literacy. You don't just encourage your EMs to embrace AI-augmented ways of working — you live it yourself, and you create the conditions for your teams to do the same.

P&T Principles

Everything you do is grounded in mobile.de's P&T principles. You embody and actively reinforce:

• Raised Standards — You hold yourself and your EMs to a high bar, and you make that bar explicit and achievable.
• Accountability — You own outcomes, not just activities. You ensure your EMs do the same.
• Prioritize like an Owner — You make hard calls on where to invest time and energy, and you help your EMs do the same for their teams.
• Integrity — You build trust through transparency, consistency, and honesty — especially when it's uncomfortable.
• Decisiveness — You move things forward. You create clarity where there is ambiguity, and you commit once a direction is set.

Job requirements

Who you are and what we're looking for

Experience

• Experience as an engineering leader who has managed Engineering Managers or led a sizeable, complex engineering organization directly (30+ engineers across multiple workstreams) — what matters is a clear-eyed understanding of both models: the leverage you gain through great EMs, and the cost of the transition
• Background in software engineering — you can have a credible conversation with both EMs and engineers
• Experience in a product-led, cross-functional team setup; familiarity with consumer-facing digital products at scale — Native App delivery experience is a bonus
• Comfortable as a co-creator of organizational strategy — shaping direction with your Head of Technology, then owning execution end-to-end

Leadership & People Skills

• Exceptional coaching and mentoring skills — you make the people around you better, including through honest, caring, and direct feedback
• Clear and open communicator — you say what you mean, you mean what you say, and you create the same psychological safety in others
• Genuine empathy and kindness — you believe people do their best work when they feel seen, respected, and supported
• Growth mindset, lived daily — curious, learning from mistakes, actively creating conditions for continuous learning in your teams
• Inclusive by conviction, not compliance — you actively value different backgrounds, experiences, and paths to success; you have no patience for entitlement or narrow-mindedness
• Tech-savvy enough to be a credible sparring partner on technical feasibility and architectural trade-offs — without overstepping into the Principal Engineer's lane

AI Mindset

• Active user of AI coding and productivity tools — you lead by example, not by mandate
• Strong FinOps instincts: you track ROI on AI investments, challenge spend that doesn't deliver value, and build cost-awareness into adoption from day one
• Able to translate AI strategy into practical team-level habits, goals, and expectations; committed to giving your teams time and space to upskill

Ways of Working

• You show up every day with the intention to have a positive impact — on your people, your teams, and the product
• Drives decisions by informed consent — the best argument wins, and once a direction is set, you commit and align
• Pragmatic bias for action — results over perfection, but never at the cost of quality or people

What Success Looks Like

In the first 90 days:

• You have built genuine, trust-based relationships with each of your 5 EMs — you know their strengths, their development areas, and what they need from you
• You have a clear picture of the health, maturity, and ways of working across all 7 teams
• You have established a rhythm with your Head of Technology: regular alignment on strategy, clear ownership boundaries, and a shared view of priorities

In the first 6 months:

• Your EMs feel and operate as one team — shared purpose, mutual support, helping each other across team boundaries
• You have meaningfully raised the bar on Ways of Working, Developer Experience, and Agile Maturity in at least 2–3 teams — with changes that engineers notice and value
• Planning commitments are more reliable; EMs own cross-team dependency tracking; AI adoption is visibly progressing with you as a credible role model

In the first year:

• All 7 teams are operating at a higher standard of delivery maturity — because your EMs internalized it and drove it themselves
• The COS engineering organization is recognized within P&T as a place where engineers do their best work — high trust, high standards, strong team identity
• Your Head of Technology has more strategic bandwidth — because you are a genuine co-owner of the engineering organization, not a relay station Job responsibilities

People Leadership & EM Development

• Lead all 5 Engineering Managers with full people leader authority — performance management, career development, talent reviews, and, where necessary, difficult people decisions
• Hold EMs accountable to the Engineering Manager role canvas and act decisively when the bar is not being met; develop them individually and as a cohesive team with shared purpose
• Build a pipeline of future engineering leaders from within the organization; run regular 1:1s and skip-level conversations to stay connected to the reality of your teams

Engineering Excellence, Delivery & Strategy

• Own delivery health across the COS cluster — driving planning maturity, cross-team dependency management at EM level, and an Apps-first mindset across all 7 teams in partnership with the Principal Engineer
• Co-create the COS engineering strategy with your Head of Technology; own OKR delivery, drive prioritization with Crew and Domain Leads, and create transparency on functional excellence and investment share
• Proactively structure the Principal Engineer's involvement — making it rhythmic and structural, not reactive — and design the information flow architecture that keeps all levels of the org connected, with context flowing down and signal flowing up

AI Adoption, Literacy & FinOps

• Serve as a visible role model for AI adoption — actively using AI tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Langdock) in your own work and creating the conditions for your teams to do the same
• Ensure EMs drive AI literacy and AI-augmented workflows across their teams, with time and space for upskilling built into regular rhythms
• Own the FinOps dimension of AI in your cluster: as AI products and development workflows scale, so do cloud and inference costs. You ensure ROI thinking is embedded in every AI adoption decision — not bolted on when budgets are already blown

Stakeholder Leadership & Organizational Design

• Act as the primary engineering interface for Product, Design, Data, and QA at the COS cluster level; represent engineering in planning and strategic discussions
• Co-design team structure and ways of working with your Head of Technology, then own implementation; ensure the right staffing and skill mix across teams
• Actively participate in the extended P&T leadership team, contributing to engagement, culture, and functional excellence across mobile.de Job benefits

Working at mobile.de comes with its perks! Enjoy the following benefits (some of many):

• Rewards: competitive base salary and participation in the company’s incentive programs.
• Plan for the Future: On top of the statutory retirement insurance, we offer a competitive company pension scheme.
• Team-Building: Regular team and company events offer the opportunity to network and learn from each other.
• Learning & Development: Keep growing with access to coaching, learning platforms and resources.
• Mobility: Stay mobile with a monthly transportation allowance.
• Enjoy working: Our well‑equipped office supports focused work and teamwork - plus inviting social zones where colleagues can relax and connect
• Flexible working: a hybrid approach with the option to work abroad for a set number of days per year.
• Wellbeing: confidential employee assistance and support services available to employees and their immediate families.
• Family support: enhanced parental leave and family‑friendly policies to support all parents and careers.

Meaningful Work: We are a diverse, international, highly skilled and passionate team committed to a world where people share more and waste less. Every day you will have the opportunity to make a huge difference for our users, customers as well as shape the future.

Embracing AI: We're at the forefront of integrating cutting-edge AI technologies into our operations. Being part of mobile.de you will work with and learn about AI tools, contributing to projects that leverage AI to enhance efficiency, improve customer experiences, and drive our mission forward. With an AI-first mindset, we foster a culture of continuous learning and experimentation, empowering our team to explore and apply AI in meaningful ways for the company and themselves.

Growth and Development: We are a global organisation who truly believes in growing our people. To support this we offer lots of development and training opportunities and provide a budget for our team members.

Connection and Inclusion: Our culture is the glue that holds us together. We believe in making meaningful connections and creating an inclusive atmosphere with lots of opportunities to connect both in your day to day work and through social team activities (online and offline).