About the role

As Head of Software Development, you will lead a group of approximately 50 software engineers, organized into multiple teams, each led by an experienced Team Lead. Your focus will be on enabling leaders, shaping an engineering culture with strong business awareness, and ensuring technical excellence, while working closely with Product Management and Technical Services.

A key part of this role is also establishing, evolving, and maintaining effective software development processes that provide clarity, alignment, and predictability across teams.

This is a senior leadership role with real impact on product quality, organizational effectiveness, and long-term technical strategy.

Key tasks and responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Team Leads across backend, frontend, DevOps, and core product modules.
• Shape and execute the software development strategy for a complex, mission-critical product.
• Ensure high standards of software quality, architecture, reliability, and delivery.
• Design, establish, and continuously improve software development processes and ways of working that enable scalability, transparency, and effective cross-team collaboration.
• Promote agile, pragmatic, and outcome-oriented processes that balance team autonomy with business needs and regulatory constraints.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, system engineers, clinical experts, and validation teams.
• Balance innovation with regulatory and quality requirements typical for medical device software.
• Build and sustain a strong engineering culture based on trust, ownership, continuous improvement, and business awareness.
• Align engineering execution with product goals, timelines, and customer expectations.

Required qualifications and skills

• Extensive experience (5-7+ years) in product software development, including senior engineering leadership roles.
• At least 3–5 years of proven leadership and people development experience (including hiring, performance management, and difficult people decisions), leading 15+ software engineers and/or Team Leaders, with the ability to inspire and guide senior engineering teams.
• Proven experience in building or improving software development processes in complex product organizations (e.g. scaling teams, improving delivery flow, cross-team coordination).
• Strong ability to balance business needs, technical constraints, and team sustainability.
• Experience managing resources, priorities, and delivery timelines in complex product environments.
• Strong technical background and understanding of complex software systems.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across disciplines and seniority levels.
• People-oriented leadership mindset combined with a clear sense of ownership and accountability.

Education

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Engineering (Computer Science, Electrical Engineering) or Physics.
• Fluency in spoken and written English.

Bonus points if you have

• Experience in medical devices, high-performance computing, or similarly complex domains.
• Experience working in regulated or quality-critical environments.
• Hands-on background with C#, C++, or similar programming languages.

What we offer

• Employment contract for an indefinite period with a six-month probationary period.
• A work environment with flexible working hours and a hybrid work model.
• Plenty of personal and professional growth opportunities combined with a competitive and periodically updated salary tailored to your skills, experiences, and results.
• Interesting work full of challenges in an international working environment.
• Opportunities to work abroad.
• High-impact learning culture: regular in-house and external training sessions and a team of international professionals eager to help you grow.
• Many recreational after-work activities, additional health insurance (Specialists+), unlimited coffee, soft drinks, fruit, and other well-being goodies.
• Cosylab events (Teambuilding, New Year’s Party, Picnic … ).

Why join Cosylab?