Head of Software Development (f/m/x)

Software Development & Architecture Leadership
As Head of Software Development you will be accountable for the end-to-end ownership of the software development lifecycle across frontend, backend, and mobile platforms, ensuring consistent delivery of high-quality, scalable, and resilient software solutions. This includes strategic oversight from early concept and architectural design through development, deployment, and ongoing optimization in production environments. You will lead the definition and evolution of modern software architectures, encompassing:

• Customer-facing frontend applications built on contemporary web frameworks

• Backend platforms based on cloud-native, containerized microservices architectures

• Native and cross-platform mobile applications for iOS and Android ecosystems

You will establish and govern best practices in API design, performance optimization, scalability, security, and long-term maintainability, ensuring that software platforms can evolve sustainably alongside business growth and technological advancement. Architectural decisions are expected to balance innovation with robustness, regulatory compliance, and operational efficiency across global deployments.

AI / ML Enablement and Intelligent Systems

You will provide strategic and technical leadership for the development, integration, and scaling of AI- and ML-enabled capabilities across Vision Care Solutions’ digital products. This includes guiding the creation of AI/ML engines and models trained on domain-specific datasets, aligned with real-world clinical, operational, and customer workflows.

Working closely with product management, data science, and business stakeholders, the Head of Software Development translates complex business challenges into practical, value-generating AI-driven solutions. You will ensure that AI capabilities are embedded responsibly and effectively into software platforms, enhancing decision-making, automation, and user experience.

A strong emphasis is placed on responsible AI practices, including model quality, transparency, explain ability, security, and regulatory compliance. You will ensure that AI solutions meet ZEISS’s standards for precision, trustworthiness, and ethical use, particularly within healthcare and medical-technology contexts.

Engineering Excellence, Delivery, and Operational Reliability

The Head of Software Development is responsible for establishing and sustaining a culture of engineering excellence across all software development activities. This includes defining and enforcing strong engineering standards, coding guidelines, architectural principles, and quality benchmarks across teams and locations.

You will drive the adoption and continuous improvement of DevSecOps practices, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing strategies, infrastructure-as-code, and observability frameworks. These practices ensure predictable, secure, and efficient delivery of software while enabling rapid feedback and continuous improvement.

In production environments, the Head of Software Development ensures high availability, scalability, performance, and cost efficiency, balancing speed of delivery with ZEISS’s uncompromising expectations for quality, precision, and reliability. Operational excellence is treated as a first-class responsibility, not an afterthought.

People Leadership and Engineering Culture

As a senior people leader, the Head of Software Development builds, mentors, and leads a team of Engineering Managers and senior engineers, with an overall span of approximately 20 engineers. The role is responsible for shaping a high-performing, inclusive, and product-oriented engineering organization. You will fosters a culture of:

• Ownership and accountability

• Collaboration across disciplines and geographies

• Continuous learning and technical mastery

• High standards of craftsmanship and quality

Leadership is exercised both strategically and hands-on, including active participation in architectural reviews, technical decision-making, and complex problem-solving when required. You will play a critical part in attracting, developing, and retaining top engineering talent, ensuring strong succession planning and long-term organizational capability.

Stakeholder Engagement & Global Collaboration

The Head of Software Development acts as a trusted technology partner to Vision Care Solutions leadership and works in close collaboration with global ZEISS R&D teams, product management, UX, data science, and business stakeholders.

You will translate customer, market, and business needs into scalable, secure, and future-ready software solutions, ensuring strong alignment between technology execution and strategic objectives. Operating within a global, matrixed environment, you will enable effective collaboration across regions, functions, and cultures, contributing to a cohesive and aligned digital product strategy.

Through clear communication, technical credibility, and strategic insight, you will strengthen the impact of software engineering as a key enabler of innovation and competitive advantage within ZEISS Vision Care Solutions.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline

• 12–18+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, with a significant portion spent in senior technical and people leadership roles

• Extensive professional experience and demonstrated leadership maturity within complex, software-driven product organizations, coupled with a strong academic foundation and a passion for building high-performing engineering teams

• Proven track record of leading multi-disciplinary engineering teams and delivering large-scale, business-critical software platforms in dynamic and evolving environments

• Prior experience within healthcare, medical technology, SaaS platforms, retail technology, or AI-enabled digital products is strongly preferred

• Exposure to regulated or quality-critical domains is considered a distinct advantage, particularly where software solutions directly impact customer outcomes, operational efficiency, or clinical workflows

• Demonstrated experience working within global, matrixed R&D organizations highly desirable as well as being comfortable operating across geographies, cultures, and functions, and capable of aligning distributed teams around shared technical vision, standards, and delivery goals

• Strong people leadership capabilities, including well-developed coaching and mentoring skills to actively develop engineering talent, support career growth, and build sustainable leadership pipelines, while fostering a culture of trust, accountability, and continuous improvement

• Customer-centric and outcome-driven mindset to consistently translate business and user needs into scalable, high-quality technical solutions.

• Deep hands-on expertise across modern software engineering domains, including: Contemporary frontend application development frameworks and practices, Backend systems based on cloud-native, microservices-oriented architectures, Native and cross-platform mobile application development for iOS and Android, AI/ML model development and deployment, leveraging domain-driven and production-grade datasets, Strong understanding of cloud platforms, containerization technologies, and distributed systems

• Proven ability to design and deliver secure, high-performance, and highly scalable software solutions, with a strong appreciation for software quality, reliability, and long-term maintainability

The position can be based in Aalen (Germany), Guangzhou (China), or Bangalore (India).

Your ZEISS Recruiting Team: