Hire the best Heads of Engineering in Germany from over 15,000 CVs with the power of AI
Bring in a Head of Engineering for team scaling, delivery management, architecture reviews, and stronger engineering processes. Get fast, precise matching with vetted, available freelancers.
About the role
Engineering leadership A Head of Engineering sets direction for product delivery and the way teams build software. This role connects business goals, product needs, and technical decisions. In many companies, the person also works as an engineering manager, VP of Engineering, or interim tech lead when the org needs sharper leadership.
What they deliver
- Clear delivery plans across squads or product teams
- Better team structure, ownership, and hiring priorities
- Technical decision-making for architecture, quality, and delivery flow
- Coaching for engineering managers and senior developers
- Stronger rituals for planning, review, and incident response
Core skills A strong Head of Engineering combines people leadership with deep software judgment. They need to read code reviews, challenge trade-offs, and spot weak points in delivery before they block the roadmap.
- Team leadership and hiring
- Architecture and system design
- Agile delivery and dependency management
- Stakeholder communication with product and business leaders
- Practical use of tools like Jira, Confluence, GitHub, GitLab, CI pipelines, and observability stacks
When companies bring one in Companies hire a freelance Head of Engineering when a team is growing quickly, a leader has left, or delivery has become inconsistent. It is also a fit during restructurings, platform changes, major releases, or when founders need an experienced sparring partner without adding a permanent executive too early.
Germany context In Germany, this role often sits close to product, operations, and enterprise clients. Freelancers may work remote with regular leadership calls, or on-site when the team needs stronger alignment, workshop facilitation, or hands-on support with local stakeholders. Clear English is often enough, but German can help in companies with mixed teams or customer-facing engineering groups.
What good looks like Strong professionals do more than manage tasks. They create clarity, remove blockers, and raise the quality of decisions.
- They can explain technical trade-offs in plain language
- They build trust with developers, product managers, and executives
- They improve delivery without adding process for its own sake
- They know when to mentor, when to decide, and when to delegate
Meet FRATCH Heads of Engineering
Peter Jehle
Interim Teamlead
Last position:
Interim Teamlead at Somnomedics
- Interim Teamlead to setup a project with STM32 and NORA Bluetooth module.
- Customer is planning new hardware to replace existing hardware with Bluetooth communication instead cable connection.
- Project was already started but the requirements were not defined.
- System based on STM32 and Nora B106 CPU.
- Analyzing the existing available code base.
- Checking for possible solutions to get the project working.
- Defining the requirements.
- Applying some rules to improve the team communication.
- Working with the NRF tools to get the custom board based on NORA B106 (NRF5340) working.
- Implementation of a simple device communication by Bluetooth.
- Preparation of documentation.
- Leading communication meetings.
- Conducted discussions with customer.
- Tools used: JIRA, OneNote, Git, Confluence, Nordic NRF, Nora B106.
Jörn Kröpelin
IT Project Lead Loyalty Program Development
Last position:
IT Project Lead Loyalty Program Development at REWE Group
- Led IT project for building an in-house loyalty program for REWE and PENNY as a multi-tenant system to leverage IT synergies
- Executed full REWE Group implementation on cloud services
- Integrated loyalty functions into REWE and PENNY apps
- Oversaw expansion of PAYBACK and migration of customers to the new program
Holger Glutsch
SaaS & Platform Transformation | Cloud, AI & Data | ERP & Enterprise Integration | Enterprise Technology Leadership
Last position:
Senior Vice President of Engineering at Uptempo GmbH
- Responsible for development, architecture, QA, BI, AI and cloud operations across a global engineering organization of 150+ engineers in 21 teams across 6 countries
- Led the transformation from legacy single-tenant architecture to a cloud-native multi-tenant SaaS platform using AWS, Kubernetes and event-driven architectures
- Established engineering operating models, architecture governance and DevOps practices across multiple international teams
- Introduced Generative AI capabilities (Azure OpenAI, RAG) to enable AI-driven product features and secure enterprise data access
- Responsible for cloud infrastructure strategy, security and compliance (ISO 27001, SOC1/2) and cloud cost optimization (FinOps)
- Led enterprise integrations with ERP, CRM and commerce systems for global customers
Andrej Getze
Head of Engineering
Last position:
Head of Engineering at Pumpenfabrik Wangen GmbH (part of Atlas Copco)
- Led the engineering organization with 25 employees across series development, order engineering/master data, documentation, and project management/certification
- Managed an annual budget of €2.5 million
- Restructured the department by merging teams, streamlining processes, and significantly increasing overall efficiency
- Established a dedicated project management & certification department, enabling successful audits (including 3A) and completion of long-standing development projects
- Drove platform and product standardization, reducing complexity and increasing scalability across the portfolio
- Reduced lead times by up to 60% through modular design principles, process optimization, and industrialization efforts
- Built a high-performing R&D team from the ground up and successfully launched two new products within the last two years
- Lowered employee turnover from 24% to below 5% during restructuring by implementing a new leadership culture, clear responsibilities, and targeted talent development
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.
Daniel Fehn
Engineer / Subproject Lead
Last position:
Engineer / Subproject Lead at Kayser automotive
- Development and design of products and components in the Kayser product portfolio
- Management of concept and development projects in the HW and SW area for electrical and electronic components from prototype phase to series release
- Coordination with sales departments, internal departments, customers, and suppliers
- Preparation of technical presentations for internal and external meetings
- Commercial and technical evaluation of external service offers
- Coordination and planning of hardware and software scopes
- Support in the industrialization of HW and SW, taking budget costs and quality requirements into account
- Drawing review according to content and formal criteria
- FMEA
Tobias Abel
Technical Development Manager - Thermal Insulation and Anchor Plates
Last position:
Technical Development Manager - Thermal Insulation and Anchor Plates at Carcoustics
- Engine compartment/underbody
- Audi / VW / Lamborghini
Christian Oehlschläger
Managing Partner & Head of Electrical Engineering
Last position:
Managing Partner & Head of Electrical Engineering at B&O Automation GmbH
- Implementation of several automatic milling fixtures for metal processing in the automotive industry
- Implementation of various punching and bending machines including linking
- Electrical design of a production line for surface treatment of industrial catering ovens
Dominik Wei-Fieg
Head of Mobile Development / CTO
Last position:
Head of Mobile Development / CTO at MOSAIC BLABBER
- Technology strategy planning concerning the client-server and blockchain environments
- Development of smart contracts for the EOS blockchain using C++, Python and JavaScript and for Ethereum using Solidity
- Development of the BLABBER mobile app for iOS and Android using React Native
Stephan Menzel
Head of Development
Last position:
SAP
- Consulting and development for VR usage scenarios in industrial contexts
- Digital Twin, Unreal Engine VR deployments, Multi-user networking, Cloud infrastructure
- Technologies: AWS, Google Cloud, other Cloud Services; C++; Unreal Engine 5; Android, Meta Quest
Discover over 15,000 top freelancers
Heads of Engineering statistics
Typical experience
27 years
Average project duration
3 years
Certifications per freelancer
2
Top business areas
Product Development, Project Management, Quality Assurance
Top industries
Information Technology, Automotive, Manufacturing
Most common languages
German, English, Arabic
Bachelor's degree or higher
73%
Master's degree or higher
36%
Salary / 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
Looking for clear information? Everything important about FRATCH is here
A Head of Engineering shapes how software teams work day to day and how they deliver against product goals. The role covers team setup, technical direction, delivery flow, and communication with founders, product leads, or senior management. In many projects, the freelancer also helps define hiring needs and leadership routines.
A freelance Head of Engineering is a strong option when you need leadership now, but the long-term org design is still changing. That can be during growth, after a leadership gap, or around a major platform shift. It lets you move quickly without rushing a permanent appointment.
A strong Head of Engineering should combine people leadership with solid software judgment. Look for experience with architecture decisions, team coaching, delivery management, and stakeholder communication. They should be able to work with senior developers without micromanaging them.
The title Head of Engineering often sits between hands-on team leadership and broader department leadership. Compared with an engineering manager, the scope is usually wider and more strategic. Compared with a VP of Engineering, the focus is often more direct on execution, team health, and technical alignment, though responsibilities can overlap.
Most Heads of Engineering need to work fluently with planning, code review, and delivery tools such as Jira, GitHub, GitLab, and CI systems. They should also be comfortable with documentation and async coordination in tools like Confluence or Notion. Good candidates can switch between strategy sessions and hands-on operational follow-up.
Yes, remote work is common for a Head of Engineering in Germany, especially when the team is distributed or the scope is advisory. On-site work can still help for workshops, leadership alignment, or sensitive change processes. The key is to agree early on how often the person should join in person.
Ask for examples where the Head of Engineering improved delivery, resolved team friction, or helped a product group make harder technical choices. Good answers are concrete and show ownership, not just theory. References from founders, product leaders, or senior engineers are especially useful.
A freelance Head of Engineering should clarify scope, reporting lines, decision rights, and which problems are truly urgent. It also helps to agree on whether the role is mainly strategic, operational, or a mix of both. That avoids confusion once the work starts and keeps expectations realistic.
Request a Free Demo
Get in touch with the FRATCH team and we will get back to you within 4 hours.
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We always have the time for a call or email!
Philipp Thomaschewski
FRATCH CEO
