Company Description
Colliers is a leading diversified professional services and investment management company. With operations in 68 countries, our 22,000 enterprising people work collaboratively to provide expert advice to maximize the potential of property and real assets to accelerate the success of our clients, our investors and our people.
We are at the forefront of the real estate industry, leading the way and backed by an exceptional record of success. We are building for our future – and yours.
We strive to build our business at a competitive pace by augmenting internal growth with smart strategic acquisitions that increase market share, expand service offerings and extend our geographic reach for the benefit of our clients and shareholders.
For more than 29 years, Colliers has created value for shareholders that has resulted in superior returns and industry growth. Our people also own significant equity in our business, which brings pride of ownership to everything we do. We are passionate, take personal responsibility and always do what's right for our clients, people and communities.
Job Description
We are seeking an experienced and energetic Director of Software Engineering to lead the scaling and long-term success of our software engineering teams in the EMEA region, with a focus acting as Technical Site Lead at our newly established Technology Hub. Reporting to the Global Head of Software Engineering, you will be responsible for building and managing engineering teams, managing capacity across resources and projects to ensure delivery on time & budget and to established engineering standards and processes. This role is both strategic and operational in nature, requiring a manager with background in software engineering and with proven capability in organizational development, technical leadership, and capacity planning. You will ensure a seamless collaboration with our Product Management, Data&AI, DevOps, Infrastructure and other teams. Success in this role requires a balance of technical expertise, leadership, strategic thinking, emotional and cultural intelligence, and strong. You will work within the Global Technology Department from our Madrid office (two days a week).
Strategy & Leadership
- Manage software engineering teams, ensuring alignment with global strategy and roadmap.
- Represent the engineering function in leadership forums, contributing to strategic technology planning and budgeting.
- Collaborate closely with peers to ensure global alignment on engineering practices, resource sharing, team coordination and technology standards.
- Act as Technical Site Lead for the new EMEA Technology Hub located in Madrid/Spain and drive talent acquisition, onboarding, and capability development for engineering roles. Coordinate closely with Colliers’ local leadership team.
- Foster a strong culture of excellence, collaboration, inclusion, and appreciation within and across distributed engineering teams.
- Serve as a people leader, coaching and mentoring managers and senior engineers while cultivating future leaders.
Team & Delivery Management
- Build, scale, and manage high-performing software engineering teams across multiple domains and product lines.
- Collaborate with global product and engineering leadership to assign teams and resources to projects based on skills, capacity, and strategic priority.
- Drive the on-time, on-budget delivery and quality of engineering projects, ensuring project scope, milestones, and resourcing remain aligned with expectations and constraints.
- Work closely with product management and other teams to identify risks, remove blockers, and proactively resolve delivery issues before they impact timelines or budget.
- Ensure robust project tracking, reporting, and accountability frameworks are in place across all active initiatives.
- Ensure efficient and flexible capacity planning, enabling rapid adjustment to changing priorities or business needs.
- Monitor and balance workload across teams to support employee wellbeing and productivity.
Operational and Technical Excellence
- Establish operational practices and rituals at the Technology Hub site that support agile delivery, clear communication, and effective cross-functional collaboration.
- Ensure consistent adherence to technology and security standards and drive continuous improvement initiatives. Support the adoption of modern engineering practices, tools, and methodologies.
- Promote engineering excellence through code quality oversight, peer reviews, architectural design, CI/CD & automation, documentation and process improvements.
- Track, report, and improve key performance indicators (e.g., velocity, quality, incident metrics, team satisfaction).
- Partner with DevOps and Engineering Operations teams to align processes, tools, and metrics.
- Ensure compliance with global standards, information security policies, and regulatory requirements (e.g. ISO, GDPR).
Qualifications
Required Skills/Experience:
- Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
- 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 5 years in engineering leadership roles.
- Proven experience building and managing regional or global engineering teams, ideally in a matrix and distributed environment.
- Hands-on experience in modern software development practices and open source technology stacks, agile methodologies, DevOps principles, and cloud-native architectures.
- Strong operational acumen in resource planning, delivery management, and performance tracking.
- Demonstrated ability to create high-performing, inclusive teams and inspire a culture of excellence.
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, fluent in English and Spanish.
- Passionate about building high-quality software products with empowered teams.
- Understanding of secure development practices and compliance frameworks (e.g. ISO27001, GDPR, SOC2).
Preferred Skills/Experience:
- Experience in site leadership or greenfield location setup is a strong plus.
- Experience in working in a global, multi-cultural organization.
- Relevant certifications (e.g. Scrum Professional, SAFe Agilist, Cloud Architecture (GCP/Azure)) are desirable but not required.
- Familiarity with EMEA/Spanish labor markets and engineering talent landscapes.
- Proficiency in collaboration tools (e.g. Azure DevOps, Jira, Confluence, Miro).
- Ability to work in a fast-paced, growing tech environment and to foster change in larger organizations.
