Head of Software Engineering

About Stellar

Stellar brings together professionals and experts from a range of exciting domains and technologies: telecommunications (cellular 4G/5G terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks, Wi-Fi and satellites), mobility (trains, aircraft, drones and road vehicles), and software for efficient data transmission, orchestration, network management, data collection, processing and analysis.

Our products and solutions - the STEER® Software Suite, M2M/IoT solutions and the all-in-one GLOBBLE® offering - are transforming how fleets, enterprises and governments experience connectivity by enabling resilient and broadband services.

Stellar products are already deployed in many countries worldwide, across three main verticals: mobility, enterprises, and governments. We are proud our solutions are and will be deployed on commercial planes, drones, firefighter’ vehicles and much more. More information is available at https://www.stellar.tc.

Stellar is an ideal workplace for professionals who are eager to learn, challenge conventional approaches, explore practical innovations and take meaningful ownership in a supportive, collaborative, results-driven, international and professional environment.

Position Summary

Reporting to the Chief Product and Technology Officer, the Head of Software Engineering leads a compact and growing senior team and owns the architecture and technical execution of the STEER® Suite, from edge devices to the management platform.

This role is built for a hands-on leader. You will be close to the code, design the architecture, and lead the team. Expect to spend time directly in the codebase and discuss test procedures! You will also own the team’s agile rhythm: sprint cadence, backlog triage and lifting roadblocks for Stellar engineers day to day.

Key Responsibilities

Hands-on engineering and software architecture

• Contribute directly to the STEER® Suite, focusing on the most critical and complex components.
• Define and evolve the software architecture, balancing long-term coherence and delivery pressure.
• Own the build, release and deployment strategy across dev, QA and production standards.
• Own technical standards, code quality and technical debt.
• Act as the senior technical point of contact on customer projects.
• Work in sync with the CPTO for all Product-related topics

Team Leadership

• Lead the software engineering team: technical mentoring, skills development, and allocation of work across the team.
• Run the team's agile cadence: sprint planning, daily rhythm, reviews and retrospectives.
• Triage incoming development tickets and assign them based on skills and capacity, within a committed turnaround.
• Grow the team as Stellar scales, including participation in hiring and onboarding.

Ways of Working

• Own how the software team works: engineering practices, agile cadence, definition of done, documentation and the balance between process and delivery speed.
• Adapt practices as the team and tooling evolve, including AI-assisted development

Collaboration

• Sequence development work with the Project Manager against project commitments and flag capacity conflicts early.
• Organise the handover between software delivery and field deployment with the operations.
• Raise the bar on engineering documentation, a current priority across Stellar’s engineering organisation.

Required Experience and Skills

• Significant software engineering experience, including several years in an architecture or technical leadership role, with the credibility to make decisions a senior team will follow.
• Experience as tech lead, lead developer or engineering manager of a small team (typically 3 to 10 engineers), with direct ownership of architecture decisions.
• Appetite to drive AI-assisted development practices; hands-on experience is a plus.
• Proven ability to lead a distributed, international team, where some engineers work fully remotely and others split time between office and home.
• Strong Linux fundamentals and comfort operating across a full software stack, from edge devices to management platform.
• Solid system and networking fundamentals (IP addressing, routing, VPNs, Linux networking).
• Hands-on experience running an agile team, including owning sprint cadence and backlog triage.
• A proactive stance on new ways of working such as AI-assisted development. Hands-on experience is welcome but not a prerequisite; the appetite to drive the shift is.
• Strong documentation habits and an end-to-end ownership mindset.
• English professional proficiency expected (French a plus).

Preferred Experience

• Experience in networking, embedded systems (OpenWrt-based or embedded Linux) ease with cloud-hosted web platforms built on Python/Django, REST APIs and asynchronous services
• Experience working with open-source-based products
• Scaling an engineering team through a growth phase.
• Introducing or reshaping engineering practices.
• CI/CD pipelines and automated testing.

What We Offer

• Full technical ownership of Stellar's software stack, with real influence over where it goes next.
• A dynamic engineering environment where practices are still being shaped and new ideas are welcome.
• The opportunity to build and shape an engineering team during a growth phase.
• Exposure to telecommunications, mobility, embedded and connected systems.
• Continuous learning in a supportive, expert-driven engineering team.
• A collaborative, international and multicultural working environment.
• A competitive compensation package, including Stellar stock options.

Location and Working Model

• Based at Stellar's office in Bruges (33), near Bordeaux, France.
• Hybrid working model combining office presence and home office. This role leads a team split across locations, so regular presence on site is expected.