Director Software Engineering

Summary

Join Babbel as their Director or VP of Software Engineering in Berlin and own the technical vision, architecture, and delivery of their language learning experiences. Lead and mentor engineering leaders and their teams, collaborating with various departments. Drive the evolution of software architecture, ways of working, and company culture. Define and execute technical strategies, translating business objectives into a coherent architecture. Develop a product engineering mindset focused on outcomes and customer value. Champion best engineering practices throughout the software development lifecycle. Build and grow diverse and distributed teams, ensuring reliability and performance.

Requirements

• Proven Leadership : 10+ years in software engineering leadership with at least 5 years leading managers or director-level teams in a product-driven environment, spanning from strategic direction into operational steering
• Technical Depth : Hands-on experience with modern mobile/web architectures (microservices, APIs), cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), and scalable data systems. Ability to lead through abstraction and take detailed technical decisions
• AI/ML Expertise : Track record of delivering production AI/ML systems at scale. Understanding of applications of NLP, recommendation systems, and reinforcement learning. Experience in super-charging engineering productivity using AI tooling
• Modernization Strategy : Effective approach to assess tech legacy and find transition paths to early value unlock
• Strategic & Operational Excellence : Ability to balance long-term architecture vision with day-to-day delivery through clear metrics and processes
• Communication & Influence : Strong stakeholder management and communication skills; able to articulate technical trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences
• People-First Approach : Passion for coaching, mentoring, and building diverse, inclusive and high-performing teams

Responsibilities

• Define & Execute Technical Strategy : Translate business and learner objectives into a coherent architecture of capabilities and technical roadmap
• Develop Product Engineering Mindset : Embed business context and co-ownership to develop a common mindset in engineering that cares more about outcomes, customer value and business impact than the exact implementation, or the tools used to solve the problem
• Drive Engineering Excellence : Champion best engineering practices and standards along the entire software development life-cycle, i.e. software architecture & design, development & testing automation, CI/CD, observability, security, and continuous operations
• Lead & Develop Leaders : Mentor engineering managers and senior engineers, fostering an environment of continuous learning and high performance
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally : Work hand-in-hand in interdisciplinary teams to deliver features that delight learners and exceed business objectives
• Scale & Optimize : Build and grow diverse and distributed teams, recruit and develop top talent, and optimize team structures, processes, and tools for maximum impact
• Ensure Reliability & Performance : Oversee product availability and observability, monitoring, incident response, and capacity planning to maintain world-class platform stability
• Foster a Growth Culture: Drive true agile principles to experiment quickly, collect and feed back data, iterate and encourage knowledge sharing across the organization, instead of being dogmatic on agile processes

Benefits

• Enjoy 30 vacation days and the chance to take a 3-month Sabbatical. Plus family and life situation counseling
• Decide how, when and from where you want to work with our flexible working hours and remote friendly options as Jobbatical (up to 3 months inside the EU) or work from our fully equipped office with nap, faith and family rooms
• Learn and grow with the internal learning opportunities, and use a yearly learning & development budget for external training. Learn languages with Babbel for free with your full access to Babbel & Babbel Live classes
• Take advantage of your mobility benefits options and a discounted Urban Sports Club membership
• Be part of our employee communities (such as Femgineers, DE&I Ambassadors and LGBTQIA groups), attend cultural and regular social events