Director of Software Development

About Stellar  

Stellar brings together professionals and experts from a range of exciting domains and technologies: telecommunications (cellular 4G/5G terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks, Wi-Fi and satellites), mobility (trains, aircraft, drones and road vehicles), and software for efficient data transmission, orchestration, network management, data collection, processing and analysis.  

Our products and solutions - the STEER® Software Suite, M2M/IoT solutions and the all-in-one GLOBBLE® offering - are transforming how fleets, enterprises and governements experience connectivity by enabling resilient and broadband services. 

Stellar products are already deployed in many countries worldwide, across three main verticals: mobility,  enterprises, and  governments. We are proud our solutions are and will be deployed on commercial planes, drones, firefighter’ vehicles and much more. More information is available at https://www.stellar.tc.  

Stellar is an ideal workplace for professionals who are eager to learn, challenge conventional approaches, explore practical innovations and take meaningful ownership in a supportive, collaborative, results-driven, international and professional environment. 

Position Summary 

Reporting to the Chief Product and Technology Officer, the Director of Software Development owns the architecture and technical execution of Stellar's software stack, covering the STEER Suite across its edge and management layers. 

This is a hands-on leadership role. You will set the technical direction, lead a compact and senior engineering team, and stay close enough to the code to make architecture decisions that hold up in production. The team works in an agile setup, and you will own its rhythm as well as its technical output: sprint cadence, backlog triage, and unblocking the team day to day. 

The role sits alongside the Project Manager and the Director of Operations, all reporting to the CPTO.  

Key Responsibilities 

Architecture and Technical Direction 

• Define and evolve the software architecture of the STEER Suite, balancing long-term coherence against delivery pressure. 
• Make and document the technical decisions that shape the stack, including build, release and deployment strategy across dev, QA and production. 
• Own technical standards, code quality and technical debt. 
• Act as the senior technical point of contact on customer projects. 
• Work in sync with the CPTO for all Product-related topics 

Team Leadership 

• Lead the software engineering team: technical mentoring, skills development, and allocation of work across the team. 
• Run the team's agile cadence: sprint planning, daily rhythm, reviews and retrospectives. 
• Triage incoming development tickets and assign them based on skills and capacity, within a committed turnaround. 
• Grow the team as Stellar scales, including participation in hiring and onboarding. 

Ways of Working 

• Own how the software team works: engineering practices, agile cadence, definition of done, and the balance between process and delivery speed. 
• Keep practices under review as the team and the tooling landscape evolve, rather than settling on a fixed process. 

Collaboration 

• Work with the Project Manager to sequence development work against project commitments, and flag capacity conflicts early. 
• Work with the Director of Operations on the handover between software delivery and field deployment. 
• Raise the bar on engineering documentation, which is a current priority across Stellar's engineering organization. 

Required Experience and Skills 

• Significant software engineering experience, including several years in an architecture or technical leadership role, with the credibility to make decisions a senior team will follow. 
• Proven experience leading a software engineering team, including mentoring and capacity planning. 
• Proven ability to lead a distributed, international team, where some engineers work fully remotely and others split time between office and home. This is how Stellar works, and leading effectively in that setting is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have. 
• Strong Linux fundamentals and comfort operating across a full software stack, from edge devices to management platform. 
• Solid system and networking fundamentals (IP addressing, routing, VPNs, Linux networking). 
• Hands-on experience running an agile team, including owning sprint cadence and backlog triage. 
• A proactive stance on new ways of working such as AI-assisted development. Hands-on experience is welcome but not a prerequisite; the appetite to drive the shift is. 
• Comfortable acting with limited management overhead and taking ownership end to end. 
• Strong documentation habits. 
• English professional proficiency expected (French a plus). 

Preferred Experience 

• Experience in telecommunications, networking or embedded systems (OpenWrt-based or embedded Linux devices). 
• Experience working with open-source-based products 
• Scaling an engineering team through a growth phase. 
• Introducing or reshaping engineering practices in a team that was previously running informally. 
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated testing. 

What We Offer 

• Full technical ownership of Stellar's software stack, with real influence over where it goes next. 
• A dynamic software development environment, with practices still being shaped and openness to the best ideas each new leader brings. 
• The opportunity to build out and shape an engineering team during a growth phase. 
• Exposure to telecommunications, mobility, embedded and connected systems. 
• Continuous learning in a supportive, expert-driven engineering team. 
• A collaborative, international and multicultural working environment. 
• A competitive compensation package, including Stellar stock options. 

Location and Working Model 

• Based at Stellar's office in Bruges (33), near Bordeaux, France. 
• Hybrid working model combining office presence and home office. This role leads a team split across locations, so regular presence on site is expected. 

Your profile is not a 100% match with the description above, but you are interested in our project? No worries, apply anyway. We are primarily looking for people with the right mindset who are willing to learn.