Head of Tech & AI

Snappcar; Utrecht; On-site; EUR 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited holiday policy

Annual development budget

Travel costs covered

Snappie HQ next to Utrecht Centraal

Scale-up environment with ownership

One month Snabbatical after 3 years

Three months paid leave after 5 years

Competitive salary with yearly review

Job summary

SnappCar is seeking a Head of Tech & AI to lead the tech team and make our product AI-first while preserving the human touch. This hands-on leadership role reports to the COO and starts early 2027, with responsibility for both technology and product ownership in a fast-growing scale-up.

You will guide a team of developers and a Data & AI Engineer, shaping backlog priorities, delivering fast, and embedding AI across the organization to drive speed and impact.

Qualifications

• Several years of experience leading a development team of 5 FTE or more.
• Digital product experience with business sense.
• Background in a startup or scale-up (marketplace, platform, e-commerce or SaaS).
• AI affinity and drive to push AI adoption across the team.
• Hands-on: you work in backlogs, tickets and releases and may code.
• Ability to challenge technical explanations and communicate clearly.
• Startup pace with grit and low bureaucracy.
• Ability to simplify complex matters for stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead the team: coach and steer daily, address people directly.
• Own the Product Owner role: translate business needs into priorities.
• Set priorities from business requirements and translate to what matters now.
• Drive iterative delivery with smaller, faster increments.
• Maintain a fast and predictable delivery rhythm.
• Make AI the standard way of working in the tech team.
• Roll out AI across SnappCar and train colleagues.
• Own data and AI within SnappCar.
• Collaborate with the senior architect and test explanations.
• Balance speed and quality: manage priority, planning and releases.

Skills

Team leadership

Product ownership

AI adoption

Hands-on coding

Architectural understanding

Communication

Job description

We are looking for a Head of Tech & AI to lead SnappCar's tech team and make our product and platform AI-first while maintaining the human touch: fast, predictable delivery and AI as the default way of working.

• Full-time
• On site Utrecht, The Netherlands

At SnappCar, we’re reshaping mobility. As the leading peer‑to‑peer car‑sharing platform, we’re on a mission to remove 5 out of 10 cars from the streets. Why? To create more space, cut CO₂ emissions, and build stronger communities. Every ride brings us closer to a cleaner, more connected world. Do you want to be a part of our team?

About the job

Working as Head of Tech & AI at SnappCar is not your typical management job. You own the product and the technology of a fast-growing scale‑up, and you have real impact on how people move around the country and Europe.

Our ambition is to be number 1 or 2 in every market we operate in, and to reach 10,000 shared cars per day by 2034. Profitable growth comes first on the way there, and AI plays a central role. For tech, that means deciding what gets built, shipping it fast with a small team, and challenging our own technology from the inside out.

As Head of Tech & AI, you lead the tech team: multiple developers and a Data & AI Engineer. This is a hands‑on leadership role: at our size you lead from close to the work, not from a distance. You also take on the Product Owner role yourself: with strong commercial sense, you translate what the business needs into clear priorities and make sure the team delivers on them quickly and predictably. You make sure AI actually lands. The tech team works 10x faster with it, and the rest of SnappCar starts working AI‑first, supported by Tech.

This is a new role in our leadership team, reporting to the COO. The intended start date is early 2027.

What will you do?

• Lead the team: multiple developers and a Data & AI Engineer, coach and steer daily, address people directly and resolve conflict quickly.
• Take on the Product Owner role yourself: bring order and overview to the backlog and priorities, with developers co‑writing tickets and AI as a tool.
• Set priorities, gather requirements from the business and translate them into what matters now.
• Challenge scope: think along about whether something can be smaller, simpler or faster, so we deliver iteratively.
• Set a fast and predictable delivery rhythm: around 90% of your focus is on execution and delivery.
• Make AI the standard way of working in the tech team, aiming for a 10x speed increase.
• Make the rest of SnappCar AI‑enabled: roll out in a controlled way and teach colleagues to work with it.
• Own data and AI within SnappCar.
• Bring proven AI use cases from the Product Owner AI into production.
• Be the sparring partner and challenger of our senior architect: you understand technology, translate it into plain language and test whether a technical explanation holds up.
• Guard the balance between speed and quality: you own priority and planning, the team owns architecture and code quality.
• Steer on quality, release frequency and lead time, roadmap vs plan, live AI use cases and tech cost per rental day.

What you bring to the team

• Several years of experience leading a development team of 5 FTE or more
• Demonstrable digital product experience, with business sense: you understand what the product has to deliver commercially.
• A background in a startup or scale‑up (marketplace, platform, e‑commerce or SaaS).
• AI affinity: you drive AI adoption and dare to push it onto the team.
• Hands‑on: you sit in the operational details. In the backlog, in the tickets, in the release. You don’t lead this team from a dashboard. Having written code yourself is a plus.
• You understand technical explanations well enough to challenge the team on content, ask the right questions and test whether an explanation holds up.
• Clear and human, firm where needed: you address people directly and seek out constructive friction.
• Startup pace: a problem of today you solve today.
• Character: grit, drive and no bureaucratic mentality.
• The brainpower to make complex matters simple and keep up with the pace of the management team.

Not ticking every box, but excited about the role and what you could bring to SnappCar? We'd still love to hear from you.

What we offer you

At SnappCar we recognize the demands of being a Head of Tech & AI, and want to make sure that next to a challenging position we offer you the following:

• Your work truly matters: the chance to make SnappCar’s product and platform AI‑first, with a tech team you shape yourself
• A key position in the leadership team, reporting directly to the COO
• A Snabbatical: one month of paid leave after 3 years, three months paid leave after 5 years
• An unlimited holiday policy
• A competitive salary and a yearly review
• An annual development budget
• Travel costs covered and SnappCar credits every quarter so you use what you’re building
• A great and fun team you’ll want to be in the office with
• Snappie HQ right next to Utrecht Centraal, with delicious coffee and lunches
• A scale‑up environment with room for ownership and visible impact

Two things worth knowing before you apply for this role

• Dutch is a plus, not a requirement. Many of our owners and renters are Dutch and a lot of the business context reaches Tech in Dutch, so it helps. But the team works in English
• We're not offering visa sponsorship for this role. You'll need the right to work in the Netherlands already.