Helvar
Engineering Manager, Embedded Software
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Engineering Manager, Embedded Software at Helvar
We’re looking for an engineering leader to manage, grow, and inspire our embedded software team, and to help us build a more unified, higher-performing engineering culture across our sites. The priority is people leadership, engineering leadership, and delivery ownership. You’ll coordinate delivery, raise the bar on how we build embedded software, and lead the team through real change.
This matters most because we’re building the next generation of our offering - an end-to-end system that spans hardware, embedded, IoT, and cloud. That program lives or dies on alignment, coordination, and cross-team collaboration, so we need a leader who understands how the whole system fits together, not just their own layer. We believe high performance and genuine care for people reinforce each other rather than compete: teams that feel trusted, that belong to something, and that are led by example are the ones that deliver their best work. We want someone who is excited by transforming an engineering organisation into a high-performing one, who can instil a sense of community and belonging, and who leads from the front. If that’s the kind of leader you are, this is a role where you can leave a mark.
This person must be able to coordinate engineering delivery, improve practices, and lead the team through change. The priority is people leadership, engineering leadership, and delivery ownership rather than purely hands-on technical expertise.
The successful candidate will be expected to help remove country-based silos between the UK and Finland, building a stronger “One Helvar” mindset across teams.
The Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate will be an experienced engineering leader with a strong technical background and proven people management experience. They should be confident leading teams, improving delivery, and influencing engineering culture. They do not need to be the deepest technical expert in the room, but they must have enough technical credibility to understand software, hardware integration, infrastructure, security, testing, quality, and the full software development lifecycle. This person should be comfortable working in a complex technical environment with Embedded Software.
What Experience We Are Looking For
The candidate must have:
- Proven experience line-managing and growing software engineers - performance management, coaching, team development - and leading teams through transformation and change.
- Genuine embedded engineering credibility: you’ve done the work (e.g. C/C++, microcontrollers, RTOS), you understand its constraints, cadence, and hardware dependencies, you know what good looks like, and you have a track record of improving engineering practices (quality, testing culture, reducing cognitive load) - even if you’re not a recent hands-on expert in every tool.
- Fluency with generative AI is mandatory. We use Claude, and we want someone who works with generative AI seamlessly and intensively as part of how they operate- and who can take our people and organisation to the next level of AI adoption.
- Broad understanding of end-to-end systems spanning hardware, embedded, IoT, and cloud, with proven experience coordinating and aligning delivery across teams working at different rhythms (embedded release management and OTA alongside cloud CI/CD) - enough to drive the alignment a next-generation program demands, without being the expert in any single layer.
- Able to put in place metrics genuinely relevant to embedded software - release predictability, defect escape rate, OTA success and rollback rates, cycle time within hardware constraints - and to drive decisions from facts rather than opinion (DORA-style delivery metrics don’t map cleanly here).
- Thinks across the development and operations boundary, collaborates closely with Product Management, and is comfortable using OKRs to set direction and measure outcomes.
- High emotional intelligence and empathy, with the ability to guide teams through uncertainty and change.
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Nice-to-Have Experience
- Hands-on exposure to embedded real-time systems, development tools, and software engineering methods.
- Embedded Linux; RTOS such as Zephyr.
- Understanding of developing code for microcontrollers such as STM32 and Nordic nRF.
- Low-level communication protocols such as BLE, UART, I2C, and SPI.
- Reading PCB schematics and using hardware debugging tools such as J-Link.
- Secure coding principles and cybersecurity for connected embedded devices.
- Experience in lighting/building environments - embedded systems, connected devices, lighting controls, smart buildings - and their protocols and standards (e.g. DALI-2/D4i, DMX, wireless mesh such as Bluetooth Mesh / Zigbee / Thread, BACnet).
- AWS IoT product or platform exposure.
- Product portfolios with mixed maturity - balancing investment across established products and next-generation development.
- International or multi-site engineering organisations, and bringing teams together across locations.
Leadership Style Required
We’re looking for a strong leader more than a purely technical specialist - someone who gets the best out of people by caring about them and by holding a high bar at the same time.
The right person should be able to:
- Build trust quickly with engineers and stakeholders.
- Lead with clarity, empathy, and accountability.
- Instil a sense of community and belonging, and lead by example.
- Challenge constructively and drive performance without creating fear.
- Be honest and kind.
- Help teams navigate uncertainty and change.
- Create a culture of collaboration, ownership, and continuous improvement.
What You'll Be Doing as Our Engineering Manager
The Engineering Manager will be responsible for:
- Line-manage the embedded software team; own performance, coaching, and team development.
- Drive engineering delivery and support coordination and collaboration across teams - including teams operating at different rhythms (embedded release management and OTA rollouts vs. cloud CI/CD).
- Improve embedded software development practices, engineering standards, quality, testing, and delivery discipline.
- Establish and use the right metrics for the embedded domain; drive decisions from facts, not opinions.
- Support transformation and change across the software organisation.
- Build stronger collaboration across sites, removing silos and encouraging shared ownership.
- Partner closely with Product Management on roadmap, priorities, and trade-offs.
- Drive and support AI adoption across the team and organisation, leading by example.
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Why Helvar
We value your growth: With a wide range of online learning opportunities and internal mobility, you’ll have the tools and support to advance your career.
- Autonomy and balance: Our culture is built on trust, offering you autonomy in your role while promoting a healthy work-life balance and benefiting from a supportive and collaborative environment.
- Wellbeing at the heart: Whether it’s our products for customers or how we care for our team, wellbeing is our top priority. We offer a dedicated Wellbeing Day every year, and all employees can take advantage of our weekly Empower Hour for wellbeing, community, or learning activities.
- A company you can trust: With over 100 years of history, we’re a stable, family-owned Finnish company that’s growing across our international locations.
If you’re excited to drive innovation, shape Helvar’s future, and grow in a company with a rich history and forward-thinking mindset, we want to hear from you!
Apply to join our team of talented and innovative experts!
If you’d like to be a part of the Helvar family, please apply for this vacancy via our Helvar Careers site at helvar.com/careers by the 13th of August 2026. We have added a few questions on the application form that we hope you won’t mind responding too.
We will be continuously interviewing candidates during the application period and will fill the position as soon as we find the right match!
For additional information on the role, please contact our Talent Acquisition & Development Manager: Ben Fryer ben.fryer@helvar.com who will get in touch with you shortly.
In the meantime, please give us a follow on Instagram: @lifeathelvar
We’re with you all the way!
Helvar is an international lighting technology company delivering intelligent, energy-efficient lighting solutions for smart, sustainable buildings. By combining advanced lighting controls, environmental sensing, and digital services, Helvar helps create healthier, more productive spaces while reducing energy consumption and supporting long-term sustainability goals.
For more than 100 years, Helvar has been at the forefront of lighting innovation, enabling buildings to operate more intelligently through data-driven insights, seamless system integration, and future-ready technology. With offices in Finland, the UK, Poland, and Sweden, and a global partner network spanning more than 80 countries, Helvar provides local expertise backed by international reach.
With over 300,000 projects delivered worldwide across a wide range of industries and applications, Helvar offers wired, wireless, and hybrid lighting control solutions, environmental sensing technologies, and a cloud-based digital services platform. Together, these solutions form a comprehensive end-to-end ecosystem that helps customers optimise building performance, enhance occupant wellbeing, and achieve their sustainability ambitions.
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