Job description
We are looking for a Director or VP of Software Engineering (full-time) to join our team in Berlin.
As Director of Software Engineering, you will own the technical vision, architecture and delivery of Babbel’s language learning experiences, shaping both what we build and how we build it in the age of AI. You will lead and mentor engineering leaders and their teams, partner closely with Business, Product, Design, and Data, and drive the evolution of our software architecture, ways-of-working, and culture to ensure Babbel continues to scale with quality, reliability, and speed.
You will:
- 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.
You have:
- 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.
Some perks of becoming a Babbelonian:
- 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
Diversity at Babbel
As part of our ongoing journey towards building a diverse, equitable and inclusive company, we welcome everyone to apply, especially those individuals who are underrepresented in tech. We are a learning company, inside and out, and we encourage you to apply even if you do not fit all the technical requirements - all candidates are assessed based on skills, qualifications and on our business needs. Please state your pronouns in your application, and let us know if you’d like to be addressed by a name other than the one appearing on your official documents. If you have a disability or special need, feel welcome to inform us, so that we can provide you with the proper assistance in the application process.
