Head of Software Engineering

About Shapeways

Shapeways is a digital manufacturer serving global customers from their world class manufacturing facility in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. We offer production-grade on-demand manufacturing services for low volume production. Our parts are used in a myriad of high tech applications like bespoke medical devices, UAVs, drones and robots.

Why is a Head of Engineering important to us?

Shapeways is looking for a Head of Engineering to run our engineering organization day to day and own our bespoke MES and ERP systems which are an important part of our competitive edge in the high tech on-demand manufacturing market. Reporting to the CTO, you lead a growing team of 7 engineers operating a platform of ~40 services. You have the opportunity to own the technical direction and architecture, the development of the team, and the flow of work between engineering and the rest of the business. This is a hands-on leadership role: you'll split your time between people, project prioritization, and implement your own projects.

What You'll Do

• Lead the engineering team day to day, running planning, unblocking work, and keeping delivery on track across the ~40 service estate (core stack: PHP/Symfony on MySQL)
• Motivate and coach the team, support hiring, and help structure day-to-day workflows as the team grows, working closely with the CTO on team decisions
• Prioritize AI investments and drive the adoption of AI-powered workflows across the engineering organization to increase development velocity, software quality, and code robustness.
• Own project prioritization and sequencing, turning requests from operations, sales, and marketing into a realistic plan the team can execute, and communicating trade-offs back clearly when timelines or scope need to shift
• Contribute hands-on to the codebase, taking on your own projects and features within the architecture and standards set by the CTO
• Be the first point of contact for day-to-day engineering questions from the rest of the business, escalating architecture, infrastructure, or system-design decisions to the CTO
• Help keep delivery visible, tracking progress, surfacing risks early, and reporting status to the CTO and stakeholders

What we're looking for

• 2-4 years of experience as an engineering manager, with experience leading, mentoring, and coordinating the work of others (e.g. as a team lead or similar)
• Strong hands-on experience with PHP/Symfony (or a comparable modern web framework) and relational databases (MySQL or similar)
• A genuine interest in people leadership: motivating a team, unblocking people, and creating a good day-to-day working environment
• Good project management instincts: able to break down work, sequence priorities, and keep a small team focused
• Comfortable working cross-functionally with non-technical stakeholders (operations, sales, marketing), and confidence communicating trade-offs and pushing back constructively
• Experience with modern infrastructure practices (Kubernetes, GitOps, containerization)
• A pragmatic, get-it-done attitude, and eagerness to grow into a broader leadership role over time

Why Join Shapeways?

• We are a fast growing company with lots of opportunities for growth
• An open and high-trust culture in an international environment
• We value teamwork, adaptability and eagerness to learn
• We love what we do and want you to love it too!