Head of Engineering
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Sep 27, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 7, 2026.
About Embedl
Embedl is a deep-tech start-up in Gothenburg building the infrastructure that lets AI run fast on real hardware, cars, robots, and other autonomous systems. We're a team of 30, serving customers worldwide, with close ties to academic research and the wider innovation ecosystem. We're small enough that everyone still knows everyone, and we want to keep it that way as we grow.
The Role
You will run all of engineering at Embedl: around 20 engineers across Software Engineering, Deep Learning Engineering, Deep Learning Research, and Infrastructure Engineering. You report to the CEO, sit on the management team, and have a say in the roadmap, hiring plan, and the company's technical story.
You own the system that turns engineering effort into a shipped, trusted product - not only the people doing the work. As we grow past the size where every decision runs through one person's memory, your job is to make sure work flows from idea to real customer use, that technical debt is a deliberate choice rather than an accident, and that the line between moving fast and being rigorous is drawn on purpose.
This is a hands-on people job. Our three technical leads own technical direction and delivery within their teams; you develop them, and you personally know all 20 engineers - what they're good at, what they want next, where they're stuck. We want a manager who's close to the work, not one who hears filtered updates from a distance.
The Scope
Direct reports: you're the formal manager for all ~20 engineers - salary, performance, promotion, and career decisions, calibrated across all four disciplines. Regular one-to-ones with everyone are part of the job, not something you delegate.
Technical leads: three are already in place, owning technical direction and delivery. You develop them and, over time, decide whether any should take on formal people responsibilities - you're strengthening this layer, not building it from scratch.
Hiring: you own the engineering hiring plan and the bar, with the CEO and HR. You run loops, make the calls, and close candidates.
Product: technical leads and the CEO are peers here, not reports. You co-own sequencing and bring the realities of buildability, cost, and risk to that conversation.
Management team: you're a member, in the bi-weekly meetings, owning the engineering half of company decisions rather than being consulted on them.
Responsibilities
Develop every engineer. Coach people across all four disciplines, in person, regularly, all of them. Own career ladders, salary, performance, and promotion decisions within the compensation architecture HR maintains, own the hiring plan with HR, and grow the technical leads into stronger leaders. Give feedback plainly, take it the same way, and expect the team to do likewise, no ego, no score-keeping.
Make shipping predictable. Keep work flowing from idea to real customer use in small, frequent batches, and decide how much process each piece of work deserves, heavy where a defect ends up in a moving vehicle, light where it doesn't.
Own technical risk, keep compliance honest. Our Head of Compliance owns the ISO program; you own technical risk and how compliance lands in daily practice - controls genuinely built into how we work, evidence as a by-product rather than a scramble before an audit.
Hold the roadmap together. Co-own sequencing with the technical leads against real commercial signal, own architecture and technical-debt trade-offs, and make kill/build calls with kill dates set in advance.
Be the bridge. Turn customer and market input from Sales into roadmap priorities alongside Product, and give Finance the real technical cost and runway behind R&D spend.
Carry the technical story. Provide the technical narrative and delivery credibility behind board and investor updates.
Who You Are
A systems thinker who looks at process, information flow, and incentives before pointing at a person when something slips.
Calm and steady under pressure, a hard week for you doesn't become a hard week for the team.
Someone who sees people as individuals, not a headcount: 20 different working styles, judged fairly, without letting personal bias creep in.
A pragmatic decision-maker who can hold two rigor bars at once: airtight where failure is unrecoverable, good enough elsewhere.
A builder of organizations, not just software, you measure success by whether the team runs well when you're not in the room.
Direct and clear, comfortable setting kill dates and saying no to work with no commercial signal behind it.
Someone who wants to know every engineer by name and by ambition, and treats AI-assisted leverage as the default, not the novelty, you use it yourself and expect every level of the ladder to as well.
Qualifications
Must-Have
8+ years in software or ML engineering, including 3+ years leading or managing teams, ideally at a fast-growing start-up or scale-up.
A real track record of developing engineers into senior, lead, or management roles - and people who'll say so.
Formal manager experience (salary, performance, promotion) for a team of meaningful size, and the appetite to do it for ~20 engineers personally.
Hands-on experience putting AI assistants and agents to work in an engineering org, with something concrete to point to what changed, what didn't.
A track record of owning roadmap and architecture trade-offs, including calling time on projects that aren't paying off.
Experience building or scaling engineering processes, career ladders, or hiring plans.
A strong communicator across technical and business stakeholders - comfortable in front of a CEO, a board, or a customer's engineering team.
B.Sc., M.Sc., or equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering Physics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
Nice-to-Have
Experience in automotive, defense, robotics, or another safety-critical or compliance-heavy industry.
Background in deep learning or edge AI, or familiarity with tools like PyTorch.
Experience with ISO or functional-safety standards such as ISO 26262 or IEC 61508.
Experience presenting to boards or investors.
Experience measuring the effect of AI-assisted engineering.
Experience managing managers, not just individual contributors.
What We Offer
A small team that likes working together and means it, we assume good intent, say what we think, and don't let disagreements get personal. Real acceptance of each other's differences, not just tolerance of them. A seat at the table on how this company is built, and room to keep learning.
Health and wellness allowance (friskvårdsbidrag) of 5000 SEK, wellness hour (friskvårdstimme), and private health insurance.
Application Process
The selection and interview process is ongoing so please send your application in English as soon as possible via our website. If you have any questions, please send them to Ann Tornberg at [email protected].
You're welcome at Embedl for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what your favorite IDE is. Join us and help shape the future of Physical AI.