Head of Software Development for companies in Germany

What a Head of Software Development does in an established firm

A Head of Software Development leads one team of developers and answers for what it ships. German job ads call the position Leiter Softwareentwicklung.

The management of a Mittelstand firm needs two answers from that team. When does a change go live? Who carries on when a developer leaves? The release plan answers the first question. Code review answers the second: a second person reads a change before it is merged, so more than one person knows the code.

Head of Software Development, team lead or CTO

The three titles overlap, and firms draw the lines in different places. The table shows one split for a firm with one development team. Bring it to our call, and we mark the column your firm needs.

Task	Team lead	Head of Software Development	CTO
Reports to	The Head of Software Development	The managing director or the CTO	The managing director or the board
Code	Writes code most of the week	Reviews merge requests and writes code where a decision needs it	Writes little code once the team grows
Releases	Plans the current sprint	Plans the releases of the next months, with dates for the management	Decides the architecture the releases build on
Estimates	Estimates tickets	Estimates projects as ranges the management can plan with	Plans the technology budget
Hiring	Takes part in technical interviews	Writes the profile with HR and decides with the management	Plans the size of the technology teams
Training	Pairs with new developers	Plans onboarding and apprenticeships	Sets the training budget
AI coding tools	Uses them in daily work	Writes the rules the team and the agents work under	Decides which tools the company licenses

In a firm with one team, the Head of Software Development may take on part of the team lead’s column too. I have worked in both columns. For online shops of Lidl and REWE I led projects and programmed front ends and back ends. As CIO of a Frankfurt fintech I held the budgets and coordinated four teams.

How I lead a development team

I lead through written rules and a plan the management can read. The rules bind the developers and the AI coding agents in the same way.

Release rhythm

I keep the backlog in a tool such as Jira and give tasks a finish date. The schedule is visible to the team and to the management. I have run projects with Scrum and hold the Professional Scrum Master I certificate.

Code review

A change reaches the main branch through a merge request that a second person has read. Production is a protected branch. A push waits until the CI checks have passed.

Estimates

I estimate in ranges and write down the open questions behind a range. When a question is answered, the range narrows. The management sees a new date as soon as the range changes.

Hiring and training

For a global real estate database I hired people and led the teams that built its web solutions. A new developer starts with the written rules and a small first task that goes through review. My training authorization from IHK Frankfurt lets your firm train apprentices in application development as well.

Claude and Codex in the team

When developers use AI coding tools with personal settings, each one works under different rules. On a client’s platform I keep AI coding agents under the same rules as the developers. Claude and Codex read one shared rule file there. A hook checks each tool call before it runs and blocks what a rule forbids. Before an agent changes code, it queries a knowledge graph of the code and the documentation.

My roles in software development, newest first

• A client’s platform transformation. With Claude and Codex I help break up a monolithic application. The work has produced more than 300 RESTful API endpoints and more than 8,000 commits.
• Head of Decentralized Finance and Node Operations, then CIO, at a Frankfurt fintech. I coordinated people from development, infrastructure, product and sales. I was responsible for the budgets and received procuration.
• Project Manager and Web Developer at an insurance group. I planned and built its web portals with Scrum and Jira. For a contract management portal I programmed the front end in Angular and connected an existing CRM.
• Project Lead and Developer in e-commerce. I led projects and programmed front ends and back ends for at least five online shops, among them shops for Lidl and REWE.
• Developer, then Managing Director and CTO, of a global real estate database. In its first years I programmed the websites and the databases myself.

Who I am

I am Michael Wutzke, and I live in Frankfurt. I have worked in IT and media for more than twenty years, as an employee and as a consultant. Today AI agents speed up how I build and transform data platforms. I teach practical work with Claude at Claude Hacker House. I work in German and English.