SD Worx is a leading payroll and HR technology company in Europe, serving millions of employees in over 27 countries. We are transforming from a traditional SaaS software organization into an AI-native technology company. This transition involves more than just adopting new tools, we aim to move away from manual coding and embrace orchestration, code review, and AI-enhanced craftsmanship. We are looking for a Tribe Lead for our Software Engineering Centre of Excellence (CoE) to drive this transformation.
The CoE will establish engineering excellence by improving engineering maturity, adopting AI-native practices, setting modern standards, and fostering continuous learning and innovation. In this role, you won’t manage day-to-day project delivery. Instead, you'll serve as a strategic advisor focused on high-impact initiatives that enhance our software engineering practices across the organisation.
Your goal is to define our "Operating System" for engineering, transitioning us from a service provider to a technology powerhouse through advanced AI and industry-leading standards. The future of software engineering involves orchestrating AI agents to generate, analyse, test, secure, and optimise software, allowing engineers to focus on architecture, validation, governance, and complex problem-solving. This is a strategic leadership role aimed at increasing the effectiveness and maturity of our software engineering efforts.
As Tribe Lead of the CoE, you will define world-class software engineering at SD Worx. You’ll advise engineering leadership on trends, modern practices, and AI-native development to accelerate our evolution into a modern technology company. Your responsibilities include improving engineering capabilities, driving AI adoption, and embedding excellence across every engineering team. Rather than overseeing daily delivery, you will set standards, influence culture, coach leaders, and ensure our practices keep pace with technological change.
Your Mission - Lead the Software Engineering Centre of Excellence to improve engineering maturity at SD Worx.
AI-Native Engineering Transformation Define the collaboration between engineers and AI throughout the Software Development Lifecycle. Evolve engineers from software developers to AI-powered engineering orchestrators. Promote the adoption of AI-assisted and agentic software engineering in design, coding, testing, documentation, operations, and continuous improvement.
Drive Engineering Excellence:- Advise teams on modern engineering practices and establish common engineering standards, quality practices, and governance to enable faster, more secure, and consistent software delivery while preserving team autonomy.
Increase Software Engineering Maturity: Continuously enhance capabilities across SD Worx by adopting modern practices, benchmarking against leading companies, and implementing engineering maturity models for ongoing improvement.
Key Impact Areas
1. Driving the AI-Native Transformation
2. Advancing Engineering Maturity
3. Governance & Technical Standards
4. Cultivating Talent & Community
What do you have to offer?
Experience: 10+ years in software engineering, with 5+ years leading engineering transformation, or developer experience at scale (500+ engineers), Engineering Excellence or Centre of Excellence initiatives within large-scale technology organisations.
Technical Depth: Deep understanding of cloud-native architectures, DevOps patterns, and security-by-design. Experience influencing senior engineering leadership and driving organisation-wide technical change. You can debate architecture with Principal Engineers.
Leadership Style: Collaborative, empathetic, and "servant-leader" oriented. You lead and coach through influence and value creation, not command-and-control.
What do we have to offer?
A dynamic environment: flexible working hours and working from home
Workation: possibility to work from any SD Worx location (4 weeks per year, EU only)
Free language courses (during your working hours)
Referral program
Learning opportunities: through an individual development plan and professional training
Career growth: whether you want to become more of an expert in your field or expand your knowledge horizontally, there’s always room to grow within SD Worx!
As this is an international role open in multiple countries, the full benefits package depends on the specific location. Salary range information will be shared with candidates during the initial interaction with the Talent Acquisition team, either by phone or email.
Shape the Future: You will be the architect of our HR tech & services future, with the budget and C-level sponsorship to make real change.
Scale: Your decisions will impact 1,400+ people and products used across 27 countries.
This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of software engineering across one of Europe's largest HR technology organisations.
You will define how hundreds of engineers build software, accelerate SD Worx's transformation into an AI-native technology company, and establish the engineering standards, practices and capabilities that will enable the organisation to compete with the world's leading technology companies.
Innovation: We are committed to being a leader in AI adoption—you will have the resources to push the boundaries of what's possible.
SD Worx values diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of origin, nationality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, ethnic or social background, or stage of life.
All hiring decisions are made based on skills, experience and role‑related qualifications.
