Head of Engineering: What the Title Means and Where It Sits

· by Marian Kamenistak

Head of engineering is the most senior engineering leader in a company that has not yet split the job into VP of Engineering and CTO. One person, the whole function: teams, delivery, hiring, and usually the technology direction too.

That is why the title confuses people. It does not name a rung on a ladder. It names a stage of the company.

I see the title constantly in my practice: 3,400+ sessions with 300+ leaders across 17+ countries since 2019, a large share of them in Central Europe, where “head of engineering” and “head of development” are the default labels for the top engineering job in orgs of 10 to 80 engineers.

What the role owns

Everything, is the short answer, and that is the problem.

Marian Kamenistak speaking with a microphone at an Engineering Leaders Community event, hand raised mid-gesture.
Delivery, org, hiring, tech direction, exec conversation, one calendar.
  1. Delivery. The roadmap, the deadlines, the trade-offs. There is nobody above to escalate to except the CEO.
  2. The teams and the managers. Org shape, first EM promotions, spans of control. Often while still being the most senior technical reviewer in the building.
  3. Hiring. The pipeline, the bar, the closing calls. At 10 to 50 engineers this is the single biggest lever the company has.
  4. Technology direction. Stack decisions, architecture bets, build vs buy. The CTO half of the job, done in the gaps between the VPE half.
  5. The exec conversation. Budgets, board slides, the “when will it ship” question. Translation between business and engineering, both directions.

How the title maps

Title Typical company Scope
Head of Engineering Startup or scale-up, ~10 to 80 engineers, common in Europe Whole engineering function, org + tech
Head of Development Agencies, enterprises, older orgs Same job, older label
VP of Engineering Scale-up with a formal exec layer The org half: teams, delivery, hiring
CTO Any stage The technology half: strategy, board, bets

The pattern under the table: as the company grows, the head-of-engineering job splits. Strategy and the board conversation go one way, the org and delivery go the other. The person holding the combined title ends up on one side of that split, and choosing which side is one of the hardest career calls in engineering leadership.

I wrote about both halves separately: VP of Engineering vs CTO covers the split itself, and the engineering director guide covers the layer that appears underneath once the org grows.

The trap built into the role

A head of engineering carries two jobs on one calendar. The org job is loud: hiring, delivery, people problems. The technology job is quiet: architecture direction, technical debt strategy, the bet that pays off in two years. Loud beats quiet on every busy week.

The result, seen across dozens of sessions: heads of engineering who have not made a real technology decision in a year, or the mirror image, deeply technical heads whose management layer is silently on fire. Both look fine from the outside until they don’t.

Marian Kamenistak studio headshot on a plain background.
The quiet half of the job rarely gets a calendar slot until someone protects one.

The fix starts with naming which job is currently losing, then protecting explicit time for it. Easier said than done under a CEO who wants both halves at full speed. That negotiation, and surviving the role until the split, is bread-and-butter work in 1:1 mentoring. The intro session is free.

Frequently asked

What is a head of engineering?+
Head of engineering is the most senior engineering leader in a company that has not yet split the role into VP of Engineering and CTO. They own the teams, the delivery, the hiring, and usually the technology direction too. The title describes seniority of scope, not a fixed rung on a ladder.
Is head of engineering the same as VP of Engineering?+
Functionally, usually yes. Head of engineering is common in European companies and startups up to about 50 engineers. VP of Engineering is the same scope with a US-style title, and appears once orgs formalize an executive layer.
Is head of engineering higher than engineering manager?+
Yes. An engineering manager runs one team. A head of engineering runs all of engineering, typically through EMs or team leads, and answers to the CEO or founder for the whole function.
What is the difference between head of engineering and head of development?+
In practice, nothing. Head of development is the older label, common in agencies and enterprises. Head of engineering is the same accountability in product-company language: teams, delivery, hiring, and often the tech direction.
When does a head of engineering become a CTO or VPE?+
When the company splits outward-facing technology strategy from inward-facing org leadership. The head of engineering usually becomes one of the two, and the honest question is which half of their current job they actually want to keep.

Read next

New posts, straight to your inbox.