Head of Engineering - Basel

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

For a hands-on engineering leader: someone who still builds every week, and makes the team around them better.

At ekona, we build production-grade AI systems for clients in multiple industries including life sciences, supply chain, consumer goods and finance. Working software lands in 4 to 6 weeks, and production applications go live in 14 to 18 weeks. 2026 has been a year of strong growth, and we're building the team to match.

We're looking for a hands-on Head of Engineering. This is not a full-time management role: you'll build on client projects yourself, and lead and grow the team alongside that. You've led engineers where the pace was real: at a consultancy or engineering services firm delivering for clients, or in a fast-moving product team where shipping mattered more than process. You shape how a team works around the problem in front of it instead of copying a playbook. And people want to work for you.

If that sounds like you, keep reading.

Build. Lead the team. Raise the bar.

Build, hands-on. A real share of your week goes to building: designing architectures, writing production code and shipping on client projects alongside the team. You also review code and unblock others. You set the technical direction because you're in the code, not above it.

Lead and grow the team. Hire, coach and develop engineers across AI, software and data. Give them ownership, clear standards and honest feedback. Build a team that good people want to join and don't want to leave.

Own delivery quality on every project. Every client gets the same Swiss-grade quality, whichever team is on the work. That means testing, CI/CD, security and observability from week one, and weekly demos of working software instead of status slides.

Decide how we work. Choose which practices earn their place. Keep process light where it can be, and add rigor where regulated clients need it. Build the playbooks, frameworks and internal tooling that let a small team deliver like a much larger one. Our engineers build with AI coding tools every day, so you'll also define what great engineering practice looks like when AI writes much of the code.

Be a technical partner to our clients. Work with client CTOs, IT teams and domain experts. Scope work, challenge assumptions, and turn business problems into architectures that ship. Take over technical delivery leadership across our client programs from the founders, and join them on new engagements, from the first conversation to the delivery plan.

What We're Looking For

What matters most is how you lead, think and build. You'll likely be a fit if you have:

• Around ten years in software engineering, including several years leading engineers
• Still a strong hands-on engineer: you write production code yourself, and you want to keep doing it
• A background at a consultancy or engineering services firm, delivering for clients against real deadlines, or at a fast-moving startup or scale-up where you built and shipped at pace
• Real technical depth in cloud-native systems: architecture, containers, CI/CD and at least one major cloud platform
• Hands-on experience with LLM and AI systems in production, or a track record of getting a team productive in a new technical domain fast
• Strong people skills: you hire well, coach well, and handle hard conversations directly and kindly
• Confidence with clients, from engineers to executives, including saying no and explaining why
• Imagination about how teams work: you pick practices because they fit the problem, not because they are in the handbook
• Very good English, spoken and written. German is a strong plus

Nice to have: experience in life sciences, pharma, supply chain or finance; delivery in regulated or validated environments; growing an engineering function from a small team.

Why ekona

• Momentum. We've grown steadily through 2026. You'll shape how engineering scales with it.
• Engineering quality actually matters. It is what we sell, and our clients feel the difference.
• Real projects, regulated industries. The work has weight.
• A seat at the table. You'll work directly with the founders and shape where ekona goes next.

Is This You?

If engineering leadership means running every ceremony by the book, keeping the velocity chart tidy and no longer touching the code, this probably isn't the right place.

If you still love to build, would rather design how a team works around the problem in front of it, and care about the people as much as the technology, it probably is.

Video Introduction

Optional, but it's the best way for us to get to know you.

A 2-3 minute video. This is your chance to be real with us.

A few things that tell us a lot:

• A problem you chased down because you couldn't let it go. What kept you at it, what you tried, what you built.
• Something you're obsessed with right now. Doesn't have to be work. Just something that's alive for you.
• Anything else that shows us who you are at your best.

We're looking for people who figure things out, stay curious, and build things that actually work. Show us that person.

Video Introduction URL (optional)

Share a link to your 2-3 minute video introduction (YouTube, Vimeo, or other platforms).