Head of Rail Product Development & Strategy

Hitachi Rail Limited; Wien; Hybrid; EUR 86,000 - 105,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Public transport accessibility

Flexible working hours

Up to 60% home office

Corporate benefits

Training opportunities

Job summary

Hitachi Rail is seeking a Head of Product Development to lead a multidisciplinary engineering organization across Austria, Hungary, and the Balkan region. You will shape the product strategy, drive cloud and software modernization, and ensure safety and cybersecurity compliance while guiding a diverse, high-performing team.

The role demands strong leadership, strategic thinking, and the ability to unite cross-cultural teams toward innovative, high-quality railway solutions with a long heritage

Qualifications

• Extensive leadership experience in a large engineering organization.
• Experience managing organizational change, transformation, and growth.
• Proven ability to lead leaders, managers, and multidisciplinary teams in international environments.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the regional product development and engineering strategy.
• Lead, inspire, and develop a multicultural organization.
• Establish a high‑performance engineering culture focused on innovation, quality, accountability and collaboration.
• Balance long‑term product evolution with operational delivery commitments.
• Drive modernization across legacy interfaces to cloud‑native architectures and modern software practices.
• Ensure compliance with railway safety, industry standards, and cybersecurity requirements.
• Oversee resource planning, budgeting and talent management.
• Foster close collaboration with product management, operations, certification bodies, customers and international teams.

Skills

Leadership

International senior leadership

People development

Strategic thinking

Job description

Hitachi Rail is seeking a Head of Product Development to lead a multidisciplinary engineering organization across Austria, Hungary, and the Balkan region. You will shape the product strategy, drive cloud and software modernization, and ensure safety and cybersecurity compliance while guiding a diverse, high-performing team.

The role demands strong leadership, strategic thinking, and the ability to unite cross-cultural teams toward innovative, high-quality railway solutions with a long heritage