Head of Development - IT

MEGA's IT department builds and evolves the ecosystem platforms behind our energy and telecom business lines. As the team grows and our delivery becomes AI-augmented, we are creating a Head of Development role: the technical reference who sets the direction, raises the bar on delivery and quality, and makes our estimates and technical decisions rigorous and defensible.

Ready for the challenge? Because we are 😊!

The Head of Development is THE technical reference for the dev team. You define the technical direction - our “Technical North Star” - take and arbitrate technical decisions, challenge and validate estimates, and coach and challenge the team to raise delivery quality - while staying hands-on enough to be fully credible with the engineers. You also lead the team on the human side - growing, motivating and retaining the engineers.

• Define and own the Technical North Star — architecture principles, standards, tooling and the AI-augmented way of working - and make sure the team follows it.

• Be the technical decision-maker and arbiter: resolve architecture and technical trade-offs and set the direction on cross-cutting choices.

• Challenge and validate estimates: bring rigour and an objective basis to sizing, and verify quotes before they go out.

• Raise delivery performance and quality: define clear objectives and KPIs across delivery, quality and cost, and drive continuous improvement in code review, testing and CI/CD.

• Coach and challenge the team: mentor developers and leads, raise the technical bar, and give direct, constructive feedback.

• Manage and grow the people: run one-to-ones, set clear objectives and development plans, own performance and career growth, and keep the team healthy, motivated and retained.

• Shape and grow the team: recruit and assess, and structure it around full-stack developers assigned to business lines, apps or features, with a front-end and a DevOps reference where relevant.

• Stay hands-on where it counts: deep enough in code and architecture to review, prototype and earn the team's trust.

• Champion AI-augmented development: set the standards, guardrails and governance for using AI tools well and safely across the delivery cycle.

• Be the technical credibility with the business: translate technical constraints and trade-offs for stakeholders and the founders. 

• 8–10+ years in software engineering, including several years leading and line-managing dev teams as a tech lead, engineering manager or head of development.

• Proven track record setting technical direction and raising delivery quality, ideally in a product or scale-up environment.

• Experience in energy / utilities or telecom is a plus.

• Solid full-stack background and real architecture / system-design depth at scale - able to arbitrate technical matters and challenge the team credibly.

• Comfortable with our stack - Vue 3 + TypeScript on the front-end and PHP / Laravel microservices on the back-end - or able to ramp fast and credibly; API and microservices, DevOps such as Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD, and a strong testing discipline.

• Estimation and delivery-performance practices in an agile environment.

• Genuine, judicious use of AI-augmented development - and the ability to set the team's practices and guardrails around it.

• Technical authority and credibility: earns the team's trust, takes decisions, and challenges without breaking trust.

• Real people-management experience: growing, motivating and retaining engineers - one-to-ones, objectives and development plans, performance and career growth, and handling tensions with empathy.

• Excellent communication: clear and structured with the team, and able to represent technical topics convincingly to the business and the founders.

• Coaching and mentoring, with direct and constructive feedback.

• Able to arbitrate between business expectations and technical constraints, and to say no with a clear rationale.

• French and English required; Dutch a plus.

Based in the heart of Liege, this full-time role offers a competitive salary package aligned with your extensive experience and qualifications.