Senior Director of Engineering - Civil Government and Commercial

Description

The company builds, launches and operates the largest fleet of imaging satellites ever put into orbit, and sells the data through a cloud platform to government, environmental and humanitarian users.

The company is both a space business and a data business, handling hardware, manufacturing, data processing and software in-house.

Customers use the imagery to build new technologies, grow revenue, support research and tackle hard global problems.

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

This is a senior leadership role over a global engineering group of more than 70 engineers across several locations and time zones.

The role covers existing flagship products for civil government and commercial customers, plus early-stage product discovery built on high-frequency imagery and derived data. AI is central to how the teams build and deliver.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach and grow a global group of more than 70 engineers, managers and directors across time zones.
• Set clear, measurable goals for each product and team, raise risks early, and make tough calls on people and priorities when results fall short.
• Run day-to-day engineering and delivery for AMS, Disaster and Wildfire solutions and the derived data portfolio, keeping them reliable and fast.
• Lead zero-to-one discovery by building the technical base and prototypes for new commercial and civil government products.
• Work daily with Product Management, Design and GTM to set direction, rank features and tie technical plans to business goals.
• Make sure systems scale and stay reliable and secure for government and enterprise users, guiding architecture and engineering practice.
• Connect the team's daily output to helping governments and businesses make timely, critical decisions using satellite data.

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 engineering teams of 50+ people across locations and time zones.
• Hands-on use of AI tools in your own work, and experience guiding engineering teams through AI adoption.
• A proven record of zero-to-one product work, including technical discovery, architecture and launching new software.
• Background building geospatial platforms, data analytics products or enterprise SaaS.
• Experience delivering tailored solutions for individual customers that exceed their expectations and feed reusable components back into the shared solution base.
• A growth mindset: you test ideas, learn fast and change course when the evidence points that way.
• Ability to turn complex business and user needs into practical technical roadmaps with cross-functional partners.
• Experience running operational reliability, cloud infrastructure and deployment lifecycles for enterprise-grade applications.
• Ability to track delivery metrics, keep availability and SLAs high, 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 for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Would stand out: success building large civil government solutions through forward deployed engineering.
• Would stand out: knowledge of the regulatory, compliance and security rules governing government technology worldwide.
• Would 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.

Expected starting gross salary for the Netherlands is €120.100 to €150.100 EUR.

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

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and the posting may close early once a suitable pool is received. The deadline is 23:45 CET (11:45pm) on the stated date.

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

Benefits

• Paid time off for vacation, holidays and company-wide days off.
• Access to an employee wellness program.
• Reimbursement for home office setup.
• Monthly reimbursement for phone and internet costs.
• Tuition reimbursement and access to LinkedIn Learning.
• Equity.
• Paid time off for volunteering.
• Benefits vary by employment type and location, based on applicable law or company policy.