Forsyth Barnes is recruiting on behalf of a financial software company for a Head of Engineering position in Berlin, Germany.
The role is a senior engineering leadership opportunity for an experienced software professional who can take ownership of architecture, technical strategy, engineering standards and the delivery of complex software systems.
The employer states that relocation assistance is available for international candidates, making the position potentially relevant to qualified professionals currently based outside Germany.
Job Details
- Position: Head of Engineering
- Reference: 197321
- Location: Berlin, Germany
- Job Type: Full-time
- Work Arrangement: On-site / regular office presence in Berlin
- Recruitment Company: Forsyth Barnes
- Sector: Financial Technology / Software
- Relocation Support: Available for international candidates
- Experience Required: 10+ years of professional software engineering experience
About the Company
The client develops financial software designed to automate accounting, payroll and tax workflows for small and medium-sized businesses.
Its engineering team works on scalable backend services, integrations with banking and tax platforms, and customer-facing interfaces designed to simplify complex financial and regulatory processes.
The platform serves finance professionals and founders across Europe, with an emphasis on operational reliability and regulatory accuracy.
About the Head of Engineering Role
The successful candidate will help define the company’s technical direction and take ownership of major architecture and engineering decisions.
The position combines hands-on software engineering with technical leadership, requiring the successful candidate to work across backend, frontend and infrastructure while collaborating with product and executive leadership.
The role will focus on building reliable, scalable and maintainable systems while helping the engineering team deliver high-impact features.
Key Responsibilities
The Head of Engineering will be responsible for:
- Owning the end-to-end architecture of critical platform components.
- Taking projects from requirements through production deployment and observability.
- Implementing and reviewing complex features across backend services, integrations and frontend interfaces.
- Working with product leaders and the CTO to establish technical roadmap priorities.
- Mentoring senior engineers.
- Developing engineering standards and improving code quality.
- Establishing operational and engineering practices.
- Defining infrastructure strategy, including CI/CD, monitoring and security.
- Leading incident response and post-incident reviews.
- Improving the resilience and reliability of production systems.
- Documenting architectural decisions and maintaining technical specifications.
- Creating runbooks and other technical documentation.
- Working with stakeholders to balance technical decisions with business requirements.
Requirements
Candidates should have:
- At least 10 years of professional software engineering experience.
- Significant experience working in product-focused or startup environments.
- Strong knowledge of system design, distributed services or platform architecture.
- Practical experience with at least two programming languages, such as:
- Java/Kotlin
- TypeScript
- Python
- Or similar technologies.
- Experience owning production systems from development through deployment and ongoing monitoring.
- Experience with incident management.
- A proven track record of making architectural decisions that improved scalability or maintainability.
- Strong technical writing skills.
- Experience creating design documents and runbooks.
- Experience mentoring senior engineers.
- Experience establishing engineering standards and practices.
- Ability to work effectively in environments with ambiguity and competing priorities.
- Strong practical engineering judgment.
Benefits
According to the job posting, the position offers:
- Competitive salary.
- Equity participation aligned with senior-level impact.
- Health insurance.
- Pension contributions consistent with German employment norms.
- Annual professional development allowance.
- Dedicated learning budget.
- Flexible hybrid working model, although regular presence in the Berlin office is expected.
- Generous paid time off.
- Parental leave policies beyond statutory minimums.
- Modern company hardware.
- Home-office setup allowance.
- Relocation assistance for international candidates.
- Team retreats and technical off-sites.
International Applicants
This position may be relevant to qualified software engineering professionals currently living outside Germany.
The job posting states that relocation assistance is available for international candidates. It also states that candidates must either be eligible to work in Germany or be willing to relocate with support.
Applicants should therefore carefully review their eligibility and discuss immigration and relocation requirements with the employer or recruiter during the recruitment process.
Relocation assistance should not automatically be interpreted as a guaranteed visa or work permit. Applicants should confirm the exact immigration support available for their individual circumstances.
How to Tailor Your CV
Because this is a senior engineering leadership position, your CV should focus on technical leadership, architecture ownership and measurable engineering outcomes rather than simply listing programming languages.
Highlight:
- 10+ years of software engineering experience.
- Engineering leadership experience.
- Architecture and system-design projects.
- Distributed systems and scalable platforms.
- Backend and frontend development experience.
- Cloud and infrastructure experience.
- CI/CD implementation.
- Monitoring and observability.
- Production system ownership.
- Incident response and reliability improvements.
- Security and infrastructure strategy.
- Mentoring and management of senior engineers.
- Technical roadmap development.
- Collaboration with CTOs, product leaders and executives.
- Technical documentation and architectural decision records.
- Quantifiable improvements in scalability, reliability, performance or delivery speed.
For example, instead of simply writing “Managed engineering infrastructure,” describe the system you managed, the technologies involved and the measurable result where possible.
How to Apply
Interested candidates should apply through the original job listing/recruiter. Applicants should review the complete original vacancy and follow the application instructions provided by the recruiter.
Disclaimer: OpportunityShape shares job opportunities to help job seekers discover employment opportunities internationally.
We do not guarantee employment, interviews, relocation assistance, visa sponsorship or work permits. The information about relocation support is based on the job posting provided by the recruiter. Applicants should confirm the current requirements, relocation arrangements and immigration support directly with Forsyth Barnes or the hiring company before accepting any offer.
Job details, requirements and availability may change, so applicants should verify the original listing before applying.
