Tribe Lead – ( Software) Engineering Centre of Excllence

Overview

In this strategic leadership role, you will shape SD Worx’s software engineering operating System by guiding AI-native transformation and engineering standards. You’ll advise engineering leadership, raise maturity, and embed excellence across tribes without managing day-to-day delivery. You’ll foster AI-augmented practices, governance, and continuous learning to accelerate secure, high-quality software. This role offers a chance to influence culture, scale modern engineering across 27 countries, and drive measurable impact.

Pay / Benefits

• flexible working hours
• remote work options
• Workation (EU locations)
• free language courses
• referral program
• individual development plan and professional training

Responsibilities

• Define world-class software engineering standards and practices across the organisation
• Advise engineering leadership on trends, AI-native development, and modern engineering practices
• Drive AI adoption and embed excellence in every engineering team
• Set non-negotiable quality and security standards while preserving team autonomy
• Increase engineering maturity through models, benchmarks, and continuous improvement
• Lead the SD Worx Campus team and Practice Guilds (Frontend, Backend, QA) to foster learning and standardization
• Design and deploy Engineering Crews to upskill teams and solve bottlenecks
• Improve Developer Experience (DevEx) by reducing friction and increasing effectiveness
• Provide strategic guidance on technology strategy, engineering organisational design, and governance
• Measure impact with metrics like Engineering Maturity Index, AI Adoption Velocity, and DevEx scores
• Shape career paths for deep specialisation and high-leverage generalists

Key requirements

• 10+ years in software engineering
• 5+ years leading engineering transformation or large-scale engineering excellence initiatives
• Track record of shifting engineering culture and selling a vision
• Hands-on with AI coding tools (e.g., Copilot, Cursor) and ability to distinguish hype from real productivity gains
• Product mindset with data-driven prioritisation
• Deep understanding of cloud-native architectures, DevOps patterns, and security-by-design
• Experience influencing senior engineering leadership and driving organisation-wide technical change
• Ability to debate architecture with Principal Engineers
• Continuous evaluation of emerging engineering practices and translating them into business value
• Collaborative, servant-leader leadership style and credibility in technical communities

• collaboration
• empathy
• influence and stakeholder management
• cloud-native architectures
• DevOps patterns
• security-by-design

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