Head of Engineering

HeadFirst Group is a market-leading HR solutions provider and platform for professionals in the Netherlands that has grown through multiple acquisitions. The Head of Engineering is responsible for defining and implementing the company’s architecture vision. This is an exciting opportunity for a platform engineer or engineering lead to turn the digital ecosystem of a growing HR tech company into a future-proof, scalable platform set-up.

About HeadFirst Group

HeadFirst Group is a market-leading, international HR service provider and platform for professionals in The Netherlands. Every day, there are working around 22000 professionals working via HeadFirst Group at clients in government, banking and insurance, transport, industry, and utilities. The company manages the entire selection process of external professionals as well as their administrative procedures. The HR solutions offered by HeadFirst, such as managed services, recruitment process outsourcing, contracting and HR consultancy, are powered by innovative functionalities like artificial intelligence, robotic process automation (RPA) and predictive analytics.

HeadFirst Group strives for a transparent and balanced labour market, bias-free, in which organisations and professionals are optimally connected. Moreover, the company aims to be a ‘Top 10 employer’ and was awarded the Great Place To Work certification in December 2022. HeadFirst Group has over 450 employees across seven locations in The Netherlands and Belgium.

Vacancy: Head of Engineering

The Head of Engineering manages the development of HeadFirst Group’s digital ecosystem. The in-house centralized platform with its connected systems processes 30.000 job requests and 90.000 contracts per year. The platform has grown and continues to grow through acquisitions of other HR or IT players, which brings about an increasing level of complexity and security requirements. While only some acquisitions are fully integrated into the HeadFirst brand and platform, all new entities need to be connected to the central data lake as quickly as possible. In addition, the platform integrates with various client systems. The Head of Engineering understands how to take HeadFirst from a full-service provider to a scalable platform company.

“The Head of Engineering will make enormous impact in the transition of HeadFirst Group to becoming a platform company.” – Mattijs Wassenburg, Director Digital & Tech

The Head of Engineering is part of the Product and Engineering leadership teams and develops a vision for the group’s digital architecture, defines the technical strategy, and sets the goals for the platform teams. Therefore, a combination of leadership skills and execution power is essential.

The teams include Business Analysts, Full-stack Engineers, Front-end Engineers, DevOps Engineers, and Test Engineers, with a headcount of 20 that is expected to increase going forward. The Head of Engineering also works closely with the Product Owner and the Scrum Master, who manage the platform team.

Apart from developing a vision for HeadFirst’s digital architecture, the Head of Engineering also has the ability to then sell this vision internally and externally with clients, partners and investors. In addition, the role takes the lead in technical engagements for new acquisitions, being responsible for managing, partnering and/or integrating the targets, and is HeadFirst’s go-to person for external discussions (e.g. in due diligence) or speaking events.

This is an exciting opportunity for a hands-on platform engineer or engineering lead to turn the digital ecosystem of a growing, international HR tech company into a future-proof, scalable platform set-up. The position is based in Hoofddorp, The Netherlands, and involves a hybrid work set-up.

Interested?

This client works with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.
To express your interest, contact Hayke Tjemmes at HaykeTjemmes@topofminds.com.