Hands-On Head of Engineering for AI Delivery

ekona; Basel; Hybrid; CHF 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

ekona in Basel is seeking a hands-on Head of Engineering who still writes production code and mentors a growing team. You’ll lead client projects, shape architecture, and set engineering standards while keeping delivery tight and predictable.

You’ll balance hands-on coding with people leadership, build scalable cloud-native systems, and collaborate with domain experts across life sciences, supply chain, finance and more.

Qualifications

• Around ten years in software engineering with leadership experience.
• Still a hands-on engineer who writes production code.
• Background at consultancy/engineering services delivering for clients or fast-moving startup/scale-up.
• Real technical depth in cloud-native systems: architecture, containers, CI/CD, major cloud platform.
• Hands-on experience with LLM/AI systems in production or enabling team productivity in new domains.
• Strong people skills: hire, coach, give feedback.
• Confidence with clients from engineers to executives; says no when needed.
• Imaginative about how teams work; pick practices that fit the problem.
• Very good English; German is a strong plus.

Skills

Hands-on leadership

Software engineering

Cloud-native systems

LLM in production

People skills

Client communication

Architectural thinking

Very good English

CI/CD

Cloud platforms

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD tooling

Job description

ekona in Basel is seeking a hands-on Head of Engineering who still writes production code and mentors a growing team. You’ll lead client projects, shape architecture, and set engineering standards while keeping delivery tight and predictable.

You’ll balance hands-on coding with people leadership, build scalable cloud-native systems, and collaborate with domain experts across life sciences, supply chain, finance and more.