We are looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our Sensing Platform Team, the core technology platform that powers our high-precision sensing solutions across multiple products.

At Optics11, we are building one of Europe’s most exciting deep-tech scale-up environments, developing advanced fiber optic sensing technology that protects critical infrastructure across underwater security, energy, and industrial applications.

This is a high-impact leadership role at the heart of our R&D organization, where you will shape teams, enable predictable execution, and help scale a multidisciplinary engineering platform that combines electronics, photonics, mechanics, and embedded systems.Rather than being the person designing every technical solution yourself, your focus is on creating the environment, structure, and leadership needed for teams to perform at their best.

This role sits at the intersection of people leadership, engineering execution, and cross-team collaboration, playing a key role in scaling our platform and supporting product innovation.

Your Impact:

Build and Lead a High-Performing Engineering Team

• Lead, coach, and develop a multidisciplinary team of engineers across electronics, photonics, mechanics, and embedded domains

• Create a strong culture of ownership, collaboration, and accountability

• Drive performance management, career development, and succession planning

• Hire and onboard new talent as the platform organization continues to scale

Enable Predictable and Sustainable Delivery

• Ensure the team delivers critical platform capabilities in a reliable and scalable way

• Align team capacity and priorities with product and platform roadmaps

• Balance short-term delivery needs with long-term engineering quality

• Provide clear visibility on progress, risks, blockers, and dependencies

Improve Engineering Ways of Working

• Continuously optimize workflows, planning, and team collaboration

• Remove blockers and improve team effectiveness

• Drive process improvements across development, validation, and release readiness

• Increase engineering efficiency through improved tooling and scalable practices

Drive Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with Product, System Engineering, and Platform leadership

• Ensure alignment between platform capabilities and product needs

• Support smooth integration of reusable platform technology into products

• Facilitate effective communication across multiple technical teams

Ensure High-Quality Engineering Outcomes

• Create the conditions for robust, scalable, and reusable hardware solutions

• Support strong engineering standards, validation, and testing practices

• Enable long-term platform thinking across products and future innovations

Why Join Us

• Join one of Europe’s most promising deep-tech scale-ups

• Lead a critical platform team at the core of our technology

• Shape the future of a rapidly growing multidisciplinary R&D organization

• Competitive salary and benefits package

• Enjoy regular team activities and company events

• Fresh team lunches provided3 times/ week

What You Bring

• Proven experience leading engineering teams of 10–15+ engineers

• Strong people leadership and coaching capabilities

• Experience working in complex multidisciplinary R&D environments

• Solid understanding of product development cycles and engineering processes

• Strong technical foundation in electronics, instrumentation, hardware systems, embedded systems, or complex engineering platforms

• MSc in Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, Systems Engineering, or a related field

• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills

Nice to Have

• Experience in a product-platform organization

• Background in photonics, fiber optics, embedded systems, or system engineering

• Experience with hardware-software integration

• Familiarity with Agile or iterative development environments

• Experience working with external suppliers or technical partners

You'll be working with clients in the defense and security sectors, obtaining a Certificate of No Objection issued by the AIVD (Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service) is mandatory. This means you will need to undergo a security screening. For more information, please refer to details on security screening.

More information

So now you know we're doing awesome projects and if you see you fit the profile we would like to get to know you. Apply or, in case of questions, get in touch with our recruiter Dóra Öveges ( dora.oveges@optics11.com).