Head of Engineering – Forma Design Apps

Position Overview 

Oslo: Hybrid 
Are you an engineering leader who is passionate about developing people, building great products, and using technology to solve meaningful real-world problems? Join Autodesk Forma and help shape the next generation of cloud-based design applications for architects, planners, and developers. 

As Head of Engineering – Forma Design Apps, you'll lead the engineering organization behind the customer-facing experiences where our users explore possibilities, develop designs, analyze their impact, and make decisions about future buildings, neighborhoods, and cities. 

This is a leadership role with real influence and autonomy. You'll coach and empower Engineering Managers, strengthen how teams work together, and help create an environment where talented people can grow, take ownership, and do their best work. You'll also stay connected to technology, bringing engineering experience and judgment to engage with teams, understanding complex challenges, and helping them make thoughtful decisions. 

At Autodesk Forma, we work in small, empowered teams where engineers, designers, and product managers share ownership of customer outcomes. We value curiosity, collaboration, experimentation, and learning from our users. You'll join an international environment where different perspectives are valued and where you can influence how we work as Forma continues to evolve. 

Our mission is ambitious: help design better cities. Forma helps architects, planners, and developers explore smarter and more sustainable solutions early in the design process — when decisions can have the greatest impact on the people who will live and work in the places they create. 

If you're excited by the opportunity to grow people, influence technology, and build products with meaningful impact, we'd love to hear from you. 

Responsibilities 

Lead and Grow the Engineering Organization 

• Lead, coach, and develop Engineering Managers, helping them build healthy, empowered, high-performing teams 

• Shape the engineering organization as we grow, including team structure, staffing, hiring, and allocation of talent across squads 

• Build an environment of trust, ownership, continuous learning, and strong engineering leadership 

• Identify capability needs and turn them into hiring, development, or organizational actions 

Drive Product & Engineering Excellence 

• Lead engineering delivery across multiple squads building customer-facing Forma design applications 

• Partner closely with Product and Design to turn product strategy and customer needs into shipped outcomes 

• Enable teams to experiment, learn from users, and move quickly while making thoughtful trade-offs between speed, quality, and long-term sustainability 

• Strengthen engineering practices across reliability, performance, scalability, observability, security, and developer experience 

Stay Close to the Technology 

• Partner with the Software Architect and Tech Leads on technical direction, risks, and cross-team dependencies 

• Bring the technical depth to engage meaningfully in engineering discussions, ask the right questions, and help teams navigate complex decisions 

• Ensure technical debt and long-term system health are deliberately balanced with product delivery 

• Encourage thoughtful adoption of emerging technologies, including AI, across our products and engineering practices 

Lead Across Forma & Autodesk 

• Strengthen collaboration across Engineering, Product, and Design 

• Partner with Forma Design Tools and other Autodesk teams on shared capabilities and integrations 

• Help teams maintain speed, experimentation, and ownership as Forma continues to grow within Autodesk 

Minimum Qualifications 

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years of previous hands-on experience as a software developer 

• Engineering leadership experience across multiple teams, including experience managing and developing Engineering Managers or senior engineering leaders 

• Track record of building and delivering customer-facing software products, ideally cloud-based web applications 

• Strong technical judgment and the credibility to engage with engineers on architecture, integrations, quality, performance, and technical trade-offs 

• Experience working closely with Product and Design to build high-quality user experiences 

• Experience hiring, coaching, and developing engineering talent and building effective teams 

• Ability to operate with autonomy, make decisions in ambiguity, and balance product delivery with long-term engineering health 

• Strong communication and collaboration skills across disciplines and seniority levels 

• Professional English proficiency 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience taking new software products from idea to market and evolving them through customer feedback and experimentation 

• Experience in a startup, scale-up, or fast-moving product technology environment, combined with experience navigating organizational complexity 

• Experience with rich, interactive, or performance-sensitive web applications 

• Experience with 3D, graphics, WebGL/WebGPU, geospatial technology, simulation, CAD, BIM, or design software 

• Experience with AI-assisted development or AI-enabled customer experiences 

• Experience using product analytics, user testing, or experimentation to inform product development 

• Knowledge of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) is helpful but not required 

• Experience working across international, cross-functional product organizations 

We know great candidates don't always match every qualification listed. If the mission excites you and you believe your experience can help us build great teams and products, we'd love to hear from you