Embedded Engineering Manager

Robotics & Defence Technology

Important: Unfortunately, visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Preferred start date: As soon as possible

Employment type: Full-time

Location: Delft, Netherlands

Competitive Salary + 10-15% bonus

About the Company

Our client is a rapidly growing deep-tech company operating at the intersection of robotics, autonomy, perception, and defence technologies. Their focus is on developing advanced software systems that enable situational awareness and intelligent autonomy for unmanned aerial platforms in demanding environments.

Their technology is designed to run on cost-efficient, widely available sensors and embedded compute platforms, allowing solutions to scale effectively across multiple operational scenarios. Their long-term vision is to build a broader ecosystem of interconnected technologies that strengthen the resilience and safety of European defence and security infrastructure.

Their engineering team is composed of highly motivated specialists who care deeply about the systems they build. Team members come from diverse technical backgrounds including Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, Computational Science, and Computer Graphics.

The company offer a collaborative startup environment and collaborate with leading organisations across the ecosystem, including government institutions, prime contractors, research organisations, and other deep-tech startups.

Your Role

As Engineering Manager, you will guide and expand a multidisciplinary engineering group spanning software, embedded systems, and hardware development. Your primary responsibility will be strengthening the engineering organisation so it can scale effectively as the company grows.

Over recent months the engineering function has made strong progress, with improved ownership structures, clearer delivery rhythms, and increasing experience with deployed systems. This position is focused on building upon those foundations rather than replacing them. A key part of your role will be ensuring that engineering processes, organizational structures, and development practices can support increasing technical complexity and team growth.

While project-focused roles concentrate on the delivery of specific technical initiatives, this role focuses on people leadership, team structure, resource planning, and the overall engineering operating model that enables consistent delivery.

You will combine technical credibility, leadership, and operational thinking, working closely with executive leadership to ensure engineering continues to operate as a high-performing and coordinated organisation during an important growth phase.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and support a multidisciplinary team working across software, hardware, and embedded systems, including mentoring junior engineers and interns.
• Continuously improve the engineering organisation structure, ensuring clear ownership, accountability, and effective collaboration.
• Align engineering capacity and staffing with company priorities and project commitments.
• Improve engineering workflows and development practices to support scalable product development and deployment.
• Drive initiatives that strengthen hardware–software integration and system-level performance across deployed platforms.
• Work closely with Product, Operations, and technical leadership to translate product objectives into clear engineering plans.
• Collaborate with DevOps and infrastructure teams to introduce pragmatic Agile processes, CI/CD practices, and quality assurance workflows suitable for a scaling startup.
• Act as an escalation point for complex technical issues affecting deployed systems.
• Support planning and prioritization of engineering work together with leadership, balancing technical debt, new features, and operational requirements.
• Conduct regular 1:1 meetings and performance discussions focused on development, ownership, and accountability.
• Participate in hiring, onboarding, and developing engineers as the team expands.

What We’re Looking For

We are looking for someone who can build trust with strong engineers and help them perform effectively as a team.

You should be comfortable working in a growing deep-tech organisation, where processes evolve alongside the company. The right candidate introduces structure where it helps while keeping the organisation agile and efficient.

You communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders and value real-world deployment feedback as much as architectural design.

You are capable of switching between strategic thinking and hands-on execution when needed, and you provide clear direction while remaining flexible in a fast-moving environment.

Skills & Experience

• Demonstrated experience leading multidisciplinary engineering teams in environments combining hardware and software development
• Experience building or scaling engineering practices within startups or high-growth technology companies
• Ability to mentor and develop engineers with varying experience levels
• Strong collaboration and communication skills across teams and functions
• Solid technical background in software systems, embedded development, robotics, or hardware-software integration
• Familiarity with Agile development methods, CI/CD pipelines, and modern engineering tools
• Comfortable working in environments with regulatory, safety, or defence-related requirements

Who Will You Work With?

You will work closely with product and technical leadership to ensure engineering execution aligns with product strategy and operational goals.

The role also involves close collaboration with project management to improve deployment readiness, system reliability, and field support processes.

As part of the leadership team, you will serve as a trusted advisor on engineering delivery and organisational development.

Decision-Making

• Significant autonomy in managing day-to-day engineering operations
• Ability to propose and implement improvements to engineering processes and workflows
• Responsibility for escalating critical technical or organizational risks when necessary

What They Offer

• Competitive compensation
• 25 vacation days per year
• Travel expense reimbursement and company laptop
• Flexible working hours and the option to work from home up to two days per week
• The opportunity to work with a highly skilled, international team of engineers and entrepreneurs tackling real-world challenges in robotics and defence technology
• Meaningful influence over how engineering processes and teams evolve
• A chance to build scalable systems and organizations during an important growth stage

5V Tech are acting as an Employment Agency for the purposes of this job vacancy. We offer a reward scheme if you can recommend someone for this position, up to €250 for you and an additional €250 to a charity of your choice, 5V Tech are recognised talent solutions experts within IoT and Deep Tech working across Europe, the UK and North America.