Find experienced Heads of Engineering in Berlin from 15,000 CVs with the power of AI
Bring in leaders for platform rebuilds, team scaling, delivery recovery, or stronger engineering processes. Cover team structure, product alignment, architecture decisions, and hiring support with fast, precise matching to vetted, available freelancers.
About the role
What they take on
A Head of Engineering sets direction for the engineering function and turns strategy into delivery. In freelance work, they step in when a team needs stronger leadership, clearer priorities, or help through change.
- Align engineering with product and business goals
- Shape team structure, roles, and delivery flow
- Review architecture, technical debt, and risk
- Improve hiring, onboarding, and engineering standards
- Support managers, leads, and senior engineers
Typical scope
The work often covers both leadership and hands-on decision support. A strong Head of Engineering can join a growth-stage startup, a scale-up, or an established company that needs a temporary senior lead while searching for a permanent hire.
Common projects include platform modernization, delivery bottleneck removal, org design, and support after a reorganization. In Berlin, companies often look for people who can work well with product, design, and business teams in English, and sometimes German, depending on the setup.
Core skills
A good candidate combines people leadership, technical judgment, and delivery discipline. They know when to step in, when to delegate, and how to keep teams focused.
- Engineering leadership and coaching
- System design and architecture review
- Agile delivery, planning, and execution
- Hiring, performance, and team development
- Stakeholder management across product and business
- Clear communication with senior leadership
Tools and methods
The exact stack depends on the company, but the role often works with modern web, cloud, and platform teams. Common areas include AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, observability tools, and issue tracking systems.
Strong professionals do not only know tools. They use metrics, team rituals, and practical decision-making to make engineering more reliable. That means better planning, fewer surprises, and clearer ownership.
When to hire freelance
Companies bring in freelance engineering leaders when the need is urgent, specific, or temporary. A freelancer can cover a gap while a search is open, stabilize a team after a change, or lead a focused improvement program without a long commitment.
- Interim leadership during a vacancy
- Rapid team scaling or restructuring
- Recovery after missed deadlines or delivery issues
- Support for a new platform, product, or operating model
- Outside perspective on engineering health
What strong leaders look like
A strong Head of Engineering is practical, not political. They can explain trade-offs, set priorities, and earn trust from both engineers and senior stakeholders.
They should be able to describe how they improve delivery, handle conflict, and make teams more effective. For Berlin companies, it also helps when they are used to working with international teams, remote collaboration, and fast-moving product groups.
Meet FRATCH Heads of Engineering
Thomas Übermeier
Innovative Fintech & Blockchain Leader · Head Of Engineering
Last position:
Head of Engineering - Midnight at IOG / Midnight
IOG (IOHK), is one of the world's pre-eminent blockchain infrastructure research and engineering companies.
- Converted a lingering R&D project into a cohesive, production-ready testnet; built and scaled the 35-member engineering team (Core, QA, SRE) to achieve this goal.
- Defined strategic direction and aligned technology development with business objectives as a key member of the leadership.
- Optimized software development processes and implemented agile methodologies, enhancing operational efficiency and code security.
- Delivered projects in a fast-paced startup environment through effective project management and resource allocation.
André Görst
IT Consulting Project Management / Engineering Subproject Management
Last position:
IT Consulting Project Management / Engineering Subproject Management at T-Systems (on assignment for government agencies)
- Projects for federal networks (NdB).
- CR management, EoL change requests, design and documentation according to ITSCM.
- Data center planning.
- Project management and engineering subproject management.
- Software development for virtual server environments according to BSI.
Clemens Berlin
Director of Engineering
Last position:
Director of Engineering at SIDES GmbH
- Leading engineering organization of 45 engineers across 8 teams while serving dual role as Head of Backend
- Addressed critical organizational challenges including siloed departments, lack of engineering processes, and absence of technical strategy
- Executed comprehensive engineering leadership in people management, organizational design, and strategic planning
- Drove platform modernization including migration to a new Python backend, implementation of React micro-frontends, and transition to event-driven architecture
- Established engineering excellence framework through Architecture Decision Records, RFC processes, and comprehensive technology roadmapping
- Transformed engineering into integrated business partner by building collaboration channels with Product Management and Customer Operations teams
- Reduced escaped bugs by 50% and increased test coverage in legacy systems
- Achieved 100% Q2 roadmap delivery through realistic planning and improved estimation accuracy
- Introduced AI engineering strategy, establishing policies, providing tools, and training team on prompt engineering and agentic workflows
- Saved €10k monthly through infrastructure optimization including AWS IoT to RabbitMQ migration and decommissioning legacy systems
- Improved team engagement from 60% to 100% survey participation and enhanced eNPS scores among team leaders
- Built high-performance team through strategic hiring of Python, Go, and frontend engineers and improved onboarding
- Implementing transition to self-organized cross-functional teams
Nico Hirsing
Project Manager Engineering/CapEx/Process Engineering
Last position:
Project Manager Engineering/CapEx/Process Engineering at Sanofi
- Planning, URS/requirements and stakeholder management for a new Greenfield QC building 4000 m²
- Project realization
Jad Nohra
Engineering Director (Hands-on)
Last position:
Software Developer at Side Project
- Vram.run: Rust, TypeScript, HF Inference API with 19 providers, 220+ HW configs, and 30+ cloud GPUs. Search a model to see which API providers serve it, which GPUs can run it locally (and how fast), and what cloud rental would cost. Or search your hardware and see what fits. Also includes a Rust CLI.
- Psychotron: JavaScript, Web Audio API, AudioWorklet, Canvas 2D. Front-end for flash fiction audiobook with Web Audio DSP chain featuring pitch-shifting, 12-voice chorus, flanger, 13-band EQ, and convolver reverb. Includes a 2D canvas effect morphing engine and synchronized teleprompter.
- RecentWork: Swift, macOS, FSEvents, launchd. macOS daemon that watches project directories and maintains a flat folder of symlinks to recently modified files. Homebrew installable.
- Mini-llm: Bash, macOS, launchd, Ollama, llama.cpp, MLX, Open WebUI. Single command that turns a Mac Mini into a headless AI server.
- ThatSlop: JavaScript. Chrome/Firefox extension for AI content detection on LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Smux: Bash, tmux. Human-friendly tmux wrapper that is Homebrew installable.
- Learn Rust Course: Rust. Course on Rust’s memory model for C++ programmers, written from experience of transitioning from C++ to Rust at Irreducible.
Jurgen Wiehan
Director of Engineering
Last position:
Director of Engineering at Wunderflats
- Reporting directly to the CEO.
- Responsible for all things in the engineering space including software engineering, architecture and quality assurance.
- Led a team of around 25 cross functional team members including frontend, backend and fullstack engineers.
- Aligned engineering strategies with organisation strategy through clearly identifiable OKRs.
- Introduced Team Topologies and Scrum, ensuring less hand-offs between teams and improving their efficiencies which resulted in more impactful solutions for our customers.
- Lead the technology due diligence process for an M&A decision.
- Spearheaded the re-architecture of our product from monolith to microservices, reducing technical debt and enabling expansion into new markets.
- Managed a budget of around €2m, optimising costs by introducing SaaS solutions and replacing homegrown systems.
- Negotiated vendor contracts, reducing costs by at least 10% and improving service delivery.
- Set clear expectations and goals for engineers ensuring their continued growth within the organisation.
- Technology stacks included React, Node.js, MongoDB and GCP.
Volker Krause
Head of Engineering
Last position:
Head of Engineering at Infoniqa
- Led engineering execution: roadmap planning, capacity alignment, risk management, dependencies, and delivery tracking.
- Consolidated multiple payroll product lines into a unified SaaS platform on Dynamics 365 Business Central, enabling scalable post-merger operations and reducing operational complexity across the portfolio.
- Restructured engineering and product teams in a remote-first setting across Germany, Austria and Poland, consisting of five cross-functional units: compliance/enabling, platform, DevOps and two stream-aligned teams with total FTE depending on phase of reorganisation.
- Rebuilt the mid-level leadership layer and mentored engineering leaders, establishing a leadership pipeline and strengthening architectural decision-making across teams for scalable growth, delivery ownership and predictability.
- Designed platform foundations and system boundaries using Team Topologies aligned structures, enabling scalable ownership, clear interfaces and parallel development across distributed teams.
- Spearheaded AI transformation by implementing AI-assisted SDLC practices using SpecKit and GitHub Actions for automated, executable specifications, while delivering agentic product capabilities by securely exposing platform data and services to AI agents and copilots via RAG-based retrieval pipelines and MCP-style extensions.
- Drove modularisation of tightly coupled legacy logic into independently deployable services, improving maintainability, testability and architectural clarity while preserving continuity through targeted, low-risk extraction rather than full rewrites.
- Established observability, CI/CD and DevOps governance as platform capabilities, increasing automated compliance gates from 25% to 75% and improving deployment cadence by 40% across 15+ product versions.
- Improved operational resilience using DORA-aligned practices (lead time ↓50%, SaaS MTTR ↓85%), strengthening reliability and reducing support overhead.
- Coordinated engineering recovery for the German payroll platform during a company-wide P0 ransomware incident; restored platform continuity within 72h, validated data integrity, and rolled out hardened runbooks and automated recovery playbooks.
- Responsible for budget compliance and cost oversight in Engineering, with limited P&L responsibility and participating in the annual COGS/OPEX/CAPEX planning cycle.
Discover over 15,000 top freelancers
Heads of Engineering statistics
Typical experience
26 years
Average project duration
3.5 years
Certifications per freelancer
4
Top business areas
Information Technology, Product Development, Project Management
Top industries
Information Technology, Education, Healthcare
Most common languages
German, English, Dutch
Bachelor's degree or higher
57%
Master's degree or higher
14%
Daily Rate Distribution
The chart shows how the daily rates of freelancers in this role are distributed, based on recent contracts on our platform. Each bar covers a rate range — its height shows how many freelancers charge within that range. Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.
Average rates for Heads of Engineering & Seniority distribution
Rates are based on recent contracts and do not include FRATCH margin.
The average daily rate is the mean of all daily rates from recent contracts of comparable freelancers on our platform.
The median daily rate is the middle value of all daily rates — half of comparable freelancers charge less, half charge more. Unlike the average, it is barely affected by outliers.
Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.
Frequently Asked Questions
Need more info? We have all the details about FRATCH
A Head of Engineering sets the technical and organizational direction for the engineering function. They help define priorities, improve delivery, and make sure teams, architecture, and business goals stay aligned. In freelance work, they often focus on a specific gap, such as team recovery, scaling, or interim leadership.
A freelancer makes sense when the need is urgent, focused, or temporary. That can be a vacancy, a restructuring, a product launch, or a team that needs stabilizing before a permanent hire arrives. It is also useful when you want senior guidance without changing the long-term org chart right away.
The titles often overlap, but the scope can differ by company size and structure. A Head of Engineering usually combines people leadership, delivery ownership, and technical direction within one function. A VP of Engineering may have a broader executive remit, while an Engineering Director may focus more on management across several teams.
Look for leadership, sound technical judgment, and the ability to improve how teams work together. A strong Head of Engineering can coach managers, challenge architecture where needed, and keep delivery moving without losing quality. Clear communication with product, design, and leadership is just as important as coding knowledge.
This role is usually leadership-first, but technical credibility matters. Many strong candidates still review architecture, read code, and join key technical discussions, even if they are not coding every day. The best fit depends on whether your team needs a people leader, a technical leader, or both.
Yes, remote collaboration works well for many engagements, especially when the team already uses clear rituals and documentation. For Berlin-based companies, a Head of Engineering may still join on-site sessions for leadership meetings, workshops, or sensitive team topics. The right setup depends on how much alignment and presence the role needs.
Judge the impact on team clarity, delivery flow, and decision quality. A strong Head of Engineering leaves behind better ownership, clearer priorities, and a calmer operating rhythm. You should see fewer bottlenecks, stronger alignment with product, and more confidence in how engineering decisions are made.
They want to know the current team shape, the main pain points, and who owns product and technical decisions. They also need clarity on whether they are expected to lead managers, support one team, or operate across the whole engineering function. In Berlin, it is helpful to know the language setup, on-site expectations, and how the company works with distributed teams.
The average hourly rate for Heads of Engineering in Berlin is 140 €, which corresponds to a daily rate of about 1,121 € based on an 8-hour working day.
Of the freelancers working as Heads of Engineering in Berlin, 57% hold at least a Bachelor's degree and 14% hold at least a Master's degree.
On average, freelancers working as Heads of Engineering in Berlin have 26 years of professional experience, with a single engagement typically lasting around 3.5 years.
The most common languages among freelancers working as Heads of Engineering in Berlin are German (100%), English (100%), and Dutch (29%).
The most common industries among freelancers working as Heads of Engineering in Berlin are Information Technology (86%), Education (43%), and Healthcare (43%).
The most common business areas among freelancers working as Heads of Engineering in Berlin are Information Technology (86%), Product Development (86%), and Project Management (86%).
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Philipp Thomaschewski
FRATCH CEO
