Senior Director of Engineering - Civil Government and Commercial

Description

The company builds, launches and runs the biggest imaging satellite network ever assembled, and sells the data through a cloud platform to government, environmental and humanitarian organisations.

It is both a space business and a data business, controlling hardware, manufacturing, data processing and software itself.

Customers worldwide use the imagery to build technologies, grow revenue, support research and tackle difficult problems.

Staff work remotely or from offices in San Francisco, Washington DC, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and the Netherlands.

This role leads a global engineering organisation of 70+ engineers, managers and directors across several countries and time zones. Oversight covers the Area Monitoring Service for EU Common Agricultural Policy compliance, disaster and wildfire products, the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, and derived data products.

You will also lead early product discovery with Product, Design and Science teams, turning high-frequency imagery and derived data into new solutions, with AI at the centre of how the teams work.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and grow the global engineering organisation across geographies and time zones.
• Set performance standards, define measurable goals for each product and team, raise risks early, and make tough people and priority decisions when results fall short.
• Run day-to-day delivery and reliability for AMS, disaster and wildfire solutions, and the derived data portfolio.
• Lead zero to one discovery, building the technical foundations and prototypes for new commercial and government products.
• Work daily with Product, Design and go-to-market teams on product direction, feature priorities and technical strategy.
• Make systems scalable, reliable and secure for government and enterprise customers, guiding architecture and engineering practice.
• Connect the team's output to the mission of helping life on Earth by enabling governments and businesses to make timely decisions.

Requirements

• 10+ years of relevant software engineering experience, including 8+ years in supervisory or leadership roles across several management layers.
• Experience leading and scaling distributed teams of 50+ people across locations and time zones.
• Hands-on use of AI tools in your own work, and experience guiding teams through AI adoption.
• Track record of zero to one product development, from technical discovery and architecture to successful launch.
• Background in geospatial platforms, data analytics or enterprise SaaS.
• Experience delivering tailored solutions to individual customers, exceeding their expectations and feeding reusable components back into the shared solution base.
• A growth mindset: you experiment, learn fast and change course when the evidence points that way.
• Ability to turn complex business and user needs into technical roadmaps with cross-functional partners.
• Experience with operational reliability, cloud infrastructure and deployment lifecycles for enterprise-grade applications.
• Ability to track delivery metrics, sustain high availability and SLAs, and enforce rigorous engineering practice.
• Ability to recruit, mentor and retain engineers at every level while building an inclusive team culture.
• Clear written and verbal communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Stand out: success building large civil government solutions through forward deployed engineering.
• Stand out: familiarity with the regulatory, compliance and security requirements of government technology worldwide.
• Stand out: experience building sovereign systems for governments.

Conditions

Full-time, hybrid role: you work from the Berlin, Haarlem or Ljubljana office 3 days per week.

Slovenia starting gross salary range: €103.800 - €129.800 EUR.

Placement within the range is based on gender-neutral criteria such as skills, qualifications and experience, and the role may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses and/or equity.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis and the posting may be removed early once enough suitable applications arrive.

Application deadline: 23:45 CET on the date stated below.

Under the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered.

Candidates who do not meet every listed qualification are encouraged to apply.

Benefits

• Benefits depend on employment type and location, based on applicable law or company policy.
• Paid time off covering vacation, holidays and company-wide days off.
• Employee wellness program.
• Home office reimbursement.
• Monthly phone and internet reimbursement.
• Tuition reimbursement and access to LinkedIn Learning.
• Equity.
• Paid volunteering time off.