Job Requisition ID #
Help shape how cities are designed
We're looking for a Head of Engineering to lead engineering in the Forma Design Tools Product Area. Reporting to the Director of Engineering, you'll own engineering operations and team effectiveness across the squads that build the connected, outcome-driven foundations powering every Forma product.
As Head of Engineering for Forma Design Tools, you'll be accountable for ensuring teams deliver against ambitious commitments, operate efficiently, and keep a stable, reliable platform in the hands of both end users and the product teams building on top of it. You'll partner with Product, Design, and the Software Architect to turn strategy into shipped outcomes — without losing alignment or quality as we scale. This is a player-coach role: leadership with real technical engagement. You're not far from the code, and you're not far from the team.
Your work will enable architects, planners, and developers to discover smarter, more sustainable solutions and gain meaningful insights into their projects — and will enable the teams building Forma's design applications to move faster by composing capabilities rather than rebuilding them.
About us
We're on a mission to help design better cities.
With 90% of future population growth expected in urban areas—and construction responsible for around 40% of global CO₂ emissions—the AEC industry must evolve. Our cloud-based Autodesk Forma platform helps users evaluate design choices based on environmental impact, living quality (sun, daylight, noise), and project feasibility. We started as Spacemaker in Norway and became part of Autodesk in 2020.
Learn more about Autodesk Forma here.
How we work
We work in small, empowered teams with a high degree of trust and ownership. We strongly believe in servant leadership and team accountability. In each team, software engineers work closely together with product managers and designers. To learn more about our way of working, read through our tech and product core beliefs.
About Forma Design Tools
Forma Design Tools builds the platform that makes every Forma product better. We own the shared capabilities — Scenarios, analysis, collaboration, contextual data, and the ecosystem layer — that Forma's design applications and third-party developers build on. When we get it right, teams stop rebuilding the same foundations and start compounding each other's work.
Two promises guide how we work:
Learn once, use everywhere — for end users, the same tools and experiences appear across Forma products
Build once, works everywhere — for consuming teams, each capability is self-contained, composable, and operates on the same data foundation
We serve three distinct consumers — end users, consuming product teams, and third parties building on Forma — and we treat each as a customer, not a stakeholder.
The organisation
The Product Area is led by the Director of Product for Design Tools. The Director owns the product strategy and execution across the Product Area.
You will lead the engineers, currently 40 engineers including Engineering Managers, and the team is growing. The role comes with the autonomy to shape the organisation: how it is structured, how it hires, and how it operates.
Responsibilities
As Head of Engineering for Forma Design Tools, you will use your leadership, technical judgment, and organizational skill to drive outcomes across multiple squads. In this role, you will:
People Leadership & Team Health
Directly manage and coach Engineering Managers; keep them empowered and effective
Own org structure, staffing, and hiring decisions; recruit engineers to fill open headcount
Actively drive people allocations across squads
Ensure teams are well-supported, motivated, and operating effectively
Monitor team health, workload, and engagement, and intervene early when needed
Identify capability needs and turn them into hiring, development, or structural actions
Technical Health & Direction
Partner with the Software Architect on technical direction and cross-team alignment
Maintain clear technical contracts with consuming Product Areas — APIs, SDKs, and integration boundaries — so consuming teams can move fast without surprises
Own tech debt prioritization and execution — ensuring the right debt is paid down at the right time
Support Tech Leads in balancing delivery pressure with long-term system health
Identify key areas of technical risk and ensure they are understood and managed
Champion Developer Experience and engineering practices that compound over time
Delivery & Operational Excellence
Own Product Area delivery against committed outcomes
Run the operating cadence: planning, flow, release management, and cross-team coordination
Make explicit, transparent trade-offs between speed and quality
Embed security and compliance standards in how teams operate — making them a baseline, not an afterthought
Own system stability and incident response — and drive performance, scalability, and observability as operational standards across teams
Maintain and gradually improve engineering quality across teams
Platform & Ecosystem Delivery
Ensure capabilities are delivered as composable building blocks that work across consuming applications
Support squads in running their capabilities as products with clear contracts for internal and third-party consumers
Drive adoption of shared foundations so capabilities compound rather than fragment
Partner with consuming Product Areas to keep integrations healthy and feedback loops short
Cross-Functional Leadership
Partner closely with Product and Design leadership for Forma Design Tools
Strengthen ways of working across Product, Engineering, and Design
Ensure alignment with the Forma Design Apps Product Area and across Autodesk
Desired profile
Operates with a high degree of autonomy and clarity in ambiguous situations
Drives delivery, people, and organizational decisions across multiple squads
Combines strong engineering judgment with sound leadership instincts
Brings others along by coaching Engineering Managers and Tech Leads
Continuously identifies areas for improvement in how we work and delivers change
Collaborates across functions to align engineering with product and user outcomes
Motivated by our mission and focused on delivering meaningful outcomes at scale
What will help you succeed in this role
Typically 10+ years in software engineering, with 5+ years in engineering leadership including experience managing Engineering Managers — though we value equivalent experience and non-linear paths equally
Track record delivering cloud-based platform or shared-capability products at scale
Experience coaching and growing Engineering Managers and Tech Leads
Experience treating internal product teams as customers — running platforms as products with clear contracts and feedback loops
Proven ability to make transparent delivery and quality trade-offs under pressure
Strong engineering background, respected by the team for your technical depth
Strong collaboration and communication skills across disciplines and seniority levels
You might also bring
Experience with APIs, SDKs, extension frameworks, or ecosystem platforms
Background in AEC/BIM, geospatial/3D, simulation, or AI-assisted product surfaces (MCP, agents, RAG)
Experience scaling shared data layers or composable-capability architectures
Experience with SOC2 or similar compliance programs
Experience working in cross-functional, international product teams
Why join us
Work on real-world problems with measurable environmental impact
Lead the engineering behind the platform layer that makes every Forma product better
Shape how a growing ecosystem — internal teams and third parties — builds on Forma
Collaborate with experienced engineers, product managers, and designers across disciplines
Competitive compensation, pension, and benefits
We believe the best work happens when people feel safe to contribute fully — regardless of backgr