Qualities we look for

We care much more about how you think and what you have built than whether your background matches ours exactly.

• You have managed engineers directly and owned a team's delivery, performance, and development. You have hired people, grown them, and handled the difficult conversations as well as the good ones.
• You are a builder. You are comfortable in the trenches, you have real technical skills, and you have no interest in managing from a distance. If your hands on skills are a little rusty, that is fine, as long as you want to stay close to the work.
• You have led teams building product that users touch. Real time systems, streaming, distributed systems at scale, or similar. What matters is that technical depth was the substance of the work rather than a detail in the background.
• You have enough credibility to earn the confidence of senior engineers. You can reason about architecture, spot the failure modes, and add judgment to a technical decision rather than only facilitating it.
• You have a pragmatic working understanding of how ML systems behave in production. Inference, preprocessing, data drift, and what breaks when a model meets real users. You do not need to be an ML specialist.
• You think independently and act without waiting to be asked, and you draw those same instincts out of the people around you.
• You have strong product and commercial instinct. You frame engineering trade offs in terms of user and business outcomes.
• You are comfortable when the direction is still forming and priorities compete.

Nice to have

• Experience with voice, speech, or audio technology, including ASR, TTS, or real time audio pipelines. A strong plus rather than a requirement, and we are genuinely open to engineering leaders from other technically demanding domains.
• You have grown into a senior remit inside one organisation rather than moving on each time the title was available.
• Experience building in a startup or a small product organisation, including something ambitious that did not work out.
• Experience integrating with third party platform APIs where you do not control the other side.
• Experience leading a team through a significant architectural change or technical pivot.

What we offer

• Diverse and internationally distributed team: joining our team means becoming part of a large, global community with people of more than 90 nationalities. We're more than just colleagues; we're a group of professionals with a shared mission to connect diverse cultures. Our global presence is growing–we've doubled in size nearly every year, with our employees based in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the US, and Japan, and we continue to expand our network.
• Open communication, regular feedback: as a language-focused company, we value the importance of clear, honest communication. We value smooth collaboration, direct and actionable feedback, and believe that leading with empathy and growth mindset makes us better together.
• Hybrid work, flexible hours: we offer a hybrid work schedule, with team members coming into the office twice a week. This allows you to engage directly with your team and experience the unique energy of our workspace, while still enjoying the flexibility and comfort of working from home. With flexible working hours and trust in your productivity, we are in sync with your team’s general locations and time zones to foster effective and seamless collaboration.
• Virtual Shares: An ownership mindset in every role. We believe everyone should share in our success, and that’s why every employee receives Virtual Shares, linking your contribution directly to DeepL’s growth and rewarding you with a stake in our future.
• Regular in-person team events: we bond over vibrant events that are as unique as our team, from local team and business unit gatherings, to new-joiner onboardings, to company-wide events that bring us all together–literally.
• Monthly full-day hacking sessions: every month, we have Hack Fridays, where you can spend your time diving into a project you're passionate about and get the opportunity to work with other teams–we value your initiatives, impact, and creativity.
• 30 days of annual leave: we value your peace of mind. With 30 days off (excluding public holidays) and access to mental health resources, we make sure you're as strong mentally as you are professionally.
• Competitive benefits: just as our team spans the globe, so does our benefits package. We've crafted it to reflect the diversity of our team and tailored it to align with your unique location, to ensure you feel supported every step of the way.

If this role and our mission resonate with you, but you're hesitant because you don't check all the boxes, don't let that hold you back. At DeepL, it's all about the value you bring and the growth we can foster together. Go ahead, apply—let's discover your potential together. We can't wait to meet you!

We are an equal opportunity employer

You are welcome at DeepL for who you are - we appreciate authenticity here. Our product is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all succeed, contribute, and think forward! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our diversity that we will find the power to break down language barriers in the world.