Engineering Lead - Acolad Finland Oy - Lisbon, Portugal

Acolad is the global leader in content and language solutions. Its mission is to support companies in every industry to scale across markets and enable growth through cutting-edge technology and localization expertise. Established in 1995, the group is present in 22 countries across Europe, North America and Asia, with over 1.600 employees supported by a network of +10.000 linguists around the world. About the role We are building world-class AI systems and data products, and we need someone whose whole focus is the people who build them. This is a people-first leadership role. You lead the people who build the technology and you understand what they build. You coach and support the team, keep the day-to-day moving and visible, and align across squads and stakeholders so the engineers can do their best work and no one carries it alone. This is a people management role with technical depth. It is a role for someone who genuinely cares about people, clearly understands AI and engineering to earn the team's trust, and is energized by making a technical team work well together. Key Responsibilities People. Coach, mentor, listen, and support each person. Run honest, regular 1:1s and career conversations. Make sure everyone feels heard and has real human connection and psychological safety. Day-to-day. Organize how the team ships: a lean, agile, predictable rhythm. Run light intake and prioritization with the team, keep work moving, and keep status accurate and current. Alignment. Keep squads, peer leads, Tech Staff, and stakeholders on the same page about priorities, status, and dependencies. Progress. Make blockers visible early, follow through on commitments or renegotiate openly, and protect the team from randomization. Morale and wellbeing. Treat the team's energy as a real signal. Keep workload sustainable and catch overload or exposure before it burns people out. Escalation. Route technical decisions — architecture, model strategy, infrastructure — to Tech Staff, fast and well-framed. Bring organizational, people, or cross-team issues to the Head of AI & Data with context and a recommendation. Requirements People-first by instinct. You get energy from helping people grow, feel safe, and do well. You listen more than you talk. Technically fluent. You have worked in AI, data, and engineering organization, and understand system design, data pipelines, and delivery tradeoffs well enough to challenge options, capture rationale, and share your own in technical discussions. Engineers respect your judgment. Organized and lean. You bring just enough structure to keep things moving and tracked, and you cut anything that is ceremony for its own sake. Clear and kind. You hold high standards and psychological safety at the same time. You have hard conversations early, with care and precision. A strong communicator. You prefer clear writing to unnecessary meetings, and you keep everyone aligned without noise. Versatile and calm. You adapt to the situation, stay steady under pressure, and know when to act and when to escalate. Must have People leadership track record: coaching, mentoring, 1:1s, and building psychological safety in technical teams. Technical fluency in AI, data, and engineering: you understand system design, AI & ML workflows, infrastructure, and delivery tradeoffs well enough to challenge options, capture rationale, and earn engineers' trust. Hands-on experience with ML, NLP, or large language models is required. Delivery and operational experience: running lean and agile cadence, intake, tracking, and unblocking in an agile environment. Cross-functional alignment: experience working across squads, with senior technical staff, and with stakeholders who have competing priorities. Strong written communicator: you default to clear writing over unnecessary meetings. Nice to have A formal coaching or agile delivery certification. Experience building a people or delivery function from scratch. Familiarity with language technology, localization, globalization, internationalization or translation.