The Head of Engineering is the de facto technical team lead for Gemmo’s software development function.
You will make real technical decisions, review real code, and have real conversations with clients about architecture.
Lead and coach a cross-functional team of researchers, backend developers, and data scientists — acting as the team’s technical conscience.
Own end-to-end software delivery: system design, code quality, testing discipline, PR reviews, and deployment practices.
Design and document cloud architecture for client projects (primarily Azure), taking responsibility for service selection, cost optimisation, and scalability.
Manage direct relationships with technical stakeholders at client organisations, translating business requirements into clear engineering plans.
Liaise with the Chief AI Officer on AI system design, evaluation frameworks (train/validation/test governance), and product direction.
Establish and enforce engineering best practices across the team: coding standards, branch strategy, CI/CD, monitoring.
Identify and unblock technical risks in ongoing projects, particularly multi-agent pipelines and LLM-integrated products.
Hire, onboard, and mentor software developers; maintain a culture of technical excellence and intellectual curiosity.
Contribute to technical proposals and scoping documents for new client engagements.

Requirements

4+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a team-lead or engineering-management role
Demonstrable track record of leading and coaching teams of 5 or more software developers
Strong backend development background — Python and/or TypeScript; solid understanding of APIs, microservices, and data pipelines
Cloud architecture expertise — Azure preferred; experience with managed services, storage patterns (blob, NoSQL, relational), authentication, and cost modelling
System design mindset: comfortable designing distributed systems, reasoning about trade-offs, and communicating architecture decisions to both technical and non-technical audiences
Fluent in modern engineering practices: Git workflows, code review, automated testing, CI/CD
Excellent communication skills — able to hold technical conversations with PhD researchers and client stakeholders alike
Italian native or fluent; professional English required

Benefits

RAL : €65'000 to €80'000
Project bonuses: awarded on delivery and client impact (min 4 projects / year)
Year-end bonus: awarded for team performance
Annual salary review
+10% salary progression at each career level
Transports allowance
A brand new MacBook Pro M5 14”
Once a year, the whole team flies to Dublin for a 3-day offsite at our HQ
20 days of paid holiday per year, 8 public holidays, and 104 hours of additional permitted leave per year

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools

PythonTypeScriptAPIsmicroservicesdata pipelinescloud architectureAzureGit workflowsautomated testingCI/CD

Soft Skills

leadershipcoachingcommunicationproblem-solvingmentoringtechnical decision-makingrelationship managementteam collaborationtechnical excellenceintellectual curiosity