Head of Engineering (Berlin, hybrid)

Job description

A little about us - AI-native design: End-to-end workflows where a single prompt produces product shoots, social video, labels and full campaigns without switching tools - Millions of users: Built a large user base since 2022, with a clear product bet on where design is heading next - Diverse team: 120+ people from 30+ countries, building one product together - Product-led: Engineers, product managers, and designers shape what Kittl becomes - Strong backing: Over $45M raised from investors who've also backed Slack, Dropbox, and Figma Learn more: www.kittl.com/career http://www.kittl.com/career Your role at Kittl As Head of Engineering, you’ll lead the people side of our engineering organization. You'll own people leadership and delivery across these teams, reporting to the CTO. Your reports are a group of engineers plus a couple of team leads. You'll manage the ICs directly, help growing the team leads into stronger leaders, and keep delivery moving across the board. You'll partner closely with Product and Marketing to manage engineering capacity and make sure what we build lines up with where the company is going. What you'll do - Lead the team: Manage the engineers reporting to you directly, and coach your team leads - Streamline execution: Audit and improve development processes to eliminate bottlenecks, reduce waste, and increase team predictability and velocity - Set people standards: Define consistent and fair approaches to performance, feedback, career growth, and onboarding, while ensuring teams are structured effectively and people are aligned to the highest-impact opportunities - Connect up and across: Give leadership clear, regular updates on progress and risks, and translate company strategy into what your teams actually work on - Stay technically sharp: Weigh in on architecture and technical direction with your teams, and keep close enough to the code to make good calls and earn trust - Support the vision: Work with the CTO to shape and communicate engineering strategy, and help carry it through the org What you’ll need - Experience: 8+ years in software engineering, with at least 5+ years managing engineering teams - Growing leaders: Experience developing senior engineers and team leads, and a readiness to grow them into managers over time - People-first leadership: You get energy from growing people, and you've built teams others want to join - Technical depth: Strong background in software development, architecture, and systems design. You can effectively steer technical strategy, uphold engineering standards, and empower teams to own execution - Stack: Comfortable with TypeScript and a React / Node.js stack, familiar with modern frameworks Interview process - Recruiter interview (45 min) - CTO interview (60 min) - Product Lead interview (45 min) - Meeting the team (back-to-back, 30 min + 30 min) - Bar raiser interview with CEO (45 min) Our core tech stack TypeScript, Python, Node.js, React, Next.js, Postgres, Pulumi, k8s We are looking for someone - Who leads with care and still holds a high bar - Who takes extreme ownership and gets things done - Who's driven to make an impact and challenge the status quo - Who focuses on outcomes over output - ensuring the team delivers actual business value, not just lines of code Benefits - Maximise your impact: No matter if you’re leading a team or you stand out by your domain expertise - all we care about is supporting you to maximise your own impact - Hackathons: Our quarterly hackathons provide an environment to experiment with new concepts, push boundaries, and potentially deliver the next big thing. - Kittl Week: Each year, our global team gathers together for a whole week, to work, celebrate, get inspired, and have fun - Flexible working hours: Our core hours are 11am–5pm CET, leaving the rest of your schedule flexible to fit your style - Remote work: Work up to 50 days (10 weeks) fully remote per year from anywhere in the world, as long as you maintain our core hours - Learning & development: Our L&D budget supports your professional growth - Mobility benefit: We fully cover your monthly BVG public transport ticket - Health and fitness: Urban Sports Club membership discount - Vacation: Up to 30 vacation days per year 🌈 At Kittl, we embrace diversity and value every team member's unique background, identity, and experience. We're all about respect, honesty, and inclusivity. Together, we create a safe and supportive work environment where everyone thrives. Join us on this exciting journey of making our company and product even better!