Head of IT Software Engineering

Company Description

Eurofins Scientific is an international life sciences company, providing a unique range of analytical testing services to clients across multiple industries, to make life and our environment safer, healthier and more sustainable. From the food you eat, to the water you drink, to the medicines you rely on, Eurofins laboratories work with the biggest companies in the world to ensure the products they supply are safe, their ingredients are authentic, and labelling is accurate.

Eurofins is dedicated to delivering testing services that contribute to the health and safety of society and the planet, and to its corporate responsibility to protect the environment and ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion across the entire network of Eurofins companies.

Job Description

SUMMERY OF POSITION

The head of software engineering leads all engineering teams (software architects, developers, testers), ensuring technical delivery in time & quality and aligned with business goals. He/She manages hiring, set & controls standards (e.g. Definition of Ready, Definition of Done, unit test coverage, coding standards), oversees architecture, and ensure on-time delivery across multiple teams or projects.

Key responsibilities include mentoring software engineers and testers, defining technical strategy, coordinating with product and leadership teams, and guiding decisions around tooling, scalability, and performance. As well close collaboration with the product management on one side and the operations & support teams on the other side. Certain parts of our services are developed & operated in a DevOps manner with a streamlined CI/CD platform. You need to contribute to this and evaluate which services should be operated in which manner. 

With a focus on people leadership, he sets long-term platform evolution, aligning engineering with company strategy.

The Head of Software Engineering reports to the IT Solution Program Director.

KEY RESPONSABILITIES

The head of software engineering leads the development functions and ensures code quality, delivery velocity, and team performance. His/Her responsibilities include:

• Working with product and design to align engineering priorities with business strategy, clients needs and regulatory requirements: Eurofins laboratories are accredited and audited against several norms like ISO 17025, GxP practices among others.
• Managing and mentoring the community of technical leads, software architects, software engineers and testers, fostering a culture of strong ownership, result orientation, and innovation.
• Review and define our standards for software development, coding standards, CI/CD etc. as a member of respective Steering Committees defining this standards for Eurofins
• Define teststrategy to detect defects early, to automate unit testing, integration testing and performance/stress testing.
• Overseeing technical architecture and long-term platform evolution
• Leading hiring, performance management, and team growth
• Setting goals for delivery timelines, quality benchmarks, and system reliability
• Defining efficient and modern pipelines for fast delivery, relying on state-of-the-art infrastructure technologies.
• Implementing efficient production monitoring and alerting for proactive maintenance, using cost efficient solutions
• Leading engineering ceremonies, including retrospectives and planning
• Reporting on delivery velocity, technical risk, and progress to leadership

This role blends technical leadership with team development and delivery oversight.

The performance of the software engineering team is assessed through:

• Quality of the code: defects density, leakage rate, coverage of automation testing
• Individual and Team performance of development to increase the velocity and output
• Lead time between specifications and delivery in production
• Ability of the management team to audit the team delivery, to anticipate deviations and to suggest improved processes.

Qualifications

TECHNOLOGIES INVOLVED

Strong working knowledges of:

• Delhpi PL/SQL Java
• Client/Server Technologies. 
• Angular and similar frameworks for modern web applications;
• Application lifecycle development tools like Azure DevOps/GitHub Enterprise, SonarQube, SyHunt, Artifactory, etc.
• Unit testing frameworks like nUnit/MsUnit
• Strong working knowledge of SOLID principles and design patterns ;
• Hosting applications on AWS
• UML, object-oriented programming (OOP) and Object Oriented Design principles;
• Service oriented architecture and Micro Service Architecture principles
• multi-tier architectures.

SKILLS & EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS

The heads of software engineering lead technical teams and guide platform development. He/She should fulfil:

• Bachelor or Masters degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related field
• Mandatory experience as a professional software developer after finishing BSc/MSc degree
• 8+ years of experience in software engineering and team leadershipProven experience scaling engineering teams and processes, especially in a context of remote and distributed crews, over many delivery centres in different countries and regions.
• Deep understanding of IT architectures and software design patterns acquired through proven experience in developing and delivering software at scale, ideally within a software vendor or product company environment.
• Deep understanding of multi-tenant architectures, versioning strategies, and client-specific customization in complex enterprise systems.
• Ability to align technical delivery with product and business goals with experience in client engagement, custom solution delivery, or in managing client-specific roadmaps. This in close collaboration with product management to balance core platform evolution with client-specific needs.
• Confidence in managing people, individual and team performance including experience with Lean, Six Sigma, or Value Stream Mapping to drive measurable improvements.
• Experience with budgeting, hiring, and resource planning
• Skilled in leading code reviews, tooling selection, and QA standards
• Experience in engineering transformation, process reengineering, or technical debt reduction
• Familiarity with Agile, DevOps, and cross-functional collaboration
• Strong communication skills for working with stakeholders and leadership

Additional Information

We support your development! Do you feel you don’t match 100% of the requirements? Don’t hesitate to apply anyway! Eurofins companies are committed to supporting your career development.

We embrace diversity!  As an Equal Opportunity Employer, the Eurofins network of companies believes in strength and innovation through diversity. We prohibit discrimination against employees or applications based on gender identity and/or expression, race, nationality, age, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and everything else that makes employees of Eurofins companies unique.

Sustainability matters to us!  We are well on our way to achieving our objective of carbon neutrality by 2025, through a combination of emission reduction and compensation initiatives. We encourage our laboratory leaders to make sustainable changes at their local level, and in addition to their initiatives we count on our dedicated carbon reduction team to help us to achieve this goal!

Find out more on our Careers page: https://careers.eurofins.com/

Company description: Eurofins Scientific is an international life sciences company, providing a unique range of analytical testing services to clients across multiple industries, to make life and our environment safer, healthier and more sustainable. From the food you eat, to the water you drink, to the medicines you rely on, Eurofins laboratories work with the biggest companies in the world to ensure the products they supply are safe, their ingredients are authentic and labelling is accurate.

The Eurofins network of companies believes that it is a global leader in food, environment, pharmaceutical and cosmetic product testing and in discovery pharmacology, forensics, advanced material sciences and agroscience contract research services. It is also one of the market leaders in certain testing and laboratory services for genomics, and in the support of clinical studies, as well as in biopharma contract development and manufacturing. It also has a rapidly developing presence in highly specialised and molecular clinical diagnostic testing and in-vitro diagnostic products.

In over 37 years, Eurofins has grown from one laboratory in Nantes, France to ca. 63,000 staff across a decentralised and entrepreneurial network of more than 950 laboratories in over 1,000 companies across 60 countries. Eurofins companies offer a portfolio of over 200,000 analytical methods to evaluate the safety, identity, composition, authenticity, origin, traceability and purity of biological substances and products.

In 2024, Eurofins generated total revenues of EUR 6.95 billion, and has been among the best performing stocks in Europe over the past 20 years.