---
title: 'Lead IT Engineer at Helsing'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-it-engineer-helsing-munich-e8265kqb06mk'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-14'
---

# Lead IT Engineer at Helsing

- **Company:** Helsing
- **Location:** Munich, Germany / Berlin, Germany / London, United Kingdom
- **Posted:** 2026-10-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-14
- **Apply:** https://helsing.ai/jobs/4997901101?gh_jid=4997901101

## Job description

## Who we are

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards.

As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.

## The role

We are looking for a Lead IT Engineer to set the technical direction of Helsing's corporate IT. You will own the architecture across identity, endpoints, networking and cloud. You will also build the foundations, pipelines and engineering practices that let the team make changes safely, repeatably and with a full audit trail. You will still get hands-on when a problem calls for it, but most of your impact will come from design, technical decisions and raising the engineering bar across the IT team. This is a hands-on technical leadership role. Helsing is growing fast across new offices, production sites and customer environments, many of them with strict security and regulatory requirements. The systems you design will support the engineers and AI specialists building capabilities that protect democracies.

The day-to-day

- Own the technical architecture of our corporate IT estate and set the standards the team builds to Design and build IT tooling, including reusable Terraform modules, remote state, CI/CD pipelines, secrets management and e2e testing

- Scope, plan and lead major IT projects from concept to delivery, such as new office and production site builds, identity and device management changes, and cloud-hosted, segmented or air-gapped environments

- Act as the senior technical escalation point for IT Support and IT Engineering, and step in hands-on on the hardest problems

- Mentor engineers formally and informally, helping the team build the skills to work confidently in a code-first way

You should apply if you

- Have significant experience in IT engineering, infrastructure or DevOps, including time as the technical lead or architect for a corporate IT or cloud estate
- Are comfortable with DevOps practices such as Git workflows, pipelines, code review and secrets management, and want to bring them into an IT team
- Have deep expertise in Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, including Conditional Access, SSO and identity lifecycle
- Have experience managing macOS and Windows fleets with Jamf and Intune Understand enterprise networking and Zero Trust access
- Lead through technical credibility, explain trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical audiences

## Nice to Have

- Experience managing SaaS platforms through Terraform, such as Entra ID, Jamf, Okta or Meraki

- Experience with policy as code or automated compliance checks

- Experience in regulated or classified environments, such as BSI IT-Grundschutz, VS-NfD, ISO 27001, CE+ or NIS2

- AWS experience, particularly IAM, Organizations, IAM Identity Center and networking

- Linux server administration and virtualisation with Proxmox, VMware or Hyper-V, including on-prem and air-gapped datacentre builds

- Infrastructure and networking experience in Azure

- Experience with security tooling such as Microsoft Defender, Purview and vulnerability management platforms like Tenable.

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields

- Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns

- The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world

- Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward

- In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts

- We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about

## What we offer

- Competitive salary and VSOP options

- Relocation support: up to €2,500 and 4 weeks temporary accommodation

- Learning: €500/£450 yearly allowance

- Health & wellness: gym membership and mental health support (Nilo.health)

- Social: regular company events and monthly social allowances

- Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers & 6 weeks for secondary caregivers

- Family support: 5 days of paid family emergency leave, 100% remote work option during pregnancy and phased return to work

- A hands-on onboarding program (affectionately labelled “Infraduction”), in which you will be building tooling and applications to be used across the company. This is your opportunity to learn our tech stack, explore the company, and learn how we get things done - all whilst working with other engineering teams from day one (Specifically for engineering and AI)

These are the core benefits across all locations, there may be additional benefits in certain locations.

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.

Helsing's Candidate Privacy and Confidentiality Regime can be found [here](https://helsing.ai/candidate-privacy-and-confidentiality-regime/).

Helsing's Candidate Privacy and Confidentiality Regime can be found [here](https://helsing.ai/candidate-privacy-and-confidentiality-regime/).

## About Helsing

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Helsing builds artificial intelligence-driven autonomous systems and defense hardware to protect democratic nations, integrating airborne, maritime, and electronic warfare capabilities.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series D in progress, May 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Munich, Germany
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Torsten Reil, Gundbert Scherf, Niklas Köhler

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Defense technology, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems
- Target customers: NATO-aligned governments, defense ministries, and allied militaries (B2G)
- Mission: "Protect our democracies" – using software and AI to enhance battlefield decision-making, precision engagement, and national security

## Products & Services
- **HX-2**: AI-enabled strike drone, mass-manufactured in “Resilience Factories” (1,000+ per month)
- **HF-1**: AI-powered electronic warfare system (autonomous combat aircraft for electronic attack)
- **SG-1 Fathom**: Underwater autonomous glider for maritime surveillance and infrastructure protection
- **Cirra**: AI for electronic warfare, already flight-tested (Feb 2026)
- **CA-1 Europa**: Joint project with HENSOLDT for advanced electronic attack capabilities
- **Altra**: Recce strike software for battlefield intelligence
- **Centaur**: AI system for autonomous air dominance
- **Lura**: Underwater autonomous mass system

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed (latest deal $1.2B in progress, May 2026)
- **Total Funding**: ~$1.5B (Series D $694M in July 2025; Series C $489M in July 2024; Series B $222M in Sept 2023; Series A $119M in Nov 2021; Seed in Jan 2021)
- **Key Investors**: Prima Materia (led Series A & D), General Catalyst (led Series B & C), plus 12 total investors
- **Key Partners**: HENSOLDT, EURENCO, Grob Aircraft (subsidiary), Airbus Defence and Space (talent source)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 78.4% YoY (515 employees per LinkedIn; PitchBook reports 900); second German Resilience Factory operational (Feb 2026); expanded to 17 countries; acquired HELSING LIMITED and Helsing Germany GmbH; 192 active job postings (June 2026)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Full-stack defense AI**: Combines software, hardware, and mass manufacturing in-house, unlike traditional primes or pure software firms.
- **Resilience Factories**: Proprietary high-volume production lines for drones (1,000 HX-2/month) with local supply chains, enabling rapid scaling.
- **Ethical commitment**: Publicly emphasizes responsible AI deployment and democratic governance, differentiating from less transparent competitors.
- **Pan-European footprint**: Offices in Munich, London, Paris, Berlin – drawing top talent from across Europe and the US, with strong ties to governments.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling autonomous systems across air, land, sea, and underwater domains.
- Deepening partnerships with European defense ministries and industrial primes (e.g., HENSOLDT, EURENCO).
- Expanding electronic warfare and AI-powered strike capabilities (e.g., CA-1 Europa, Cirra).
- Recruiting heavily for AI research (RL, CV, foundation models, robotics), hardware engineering, and program management.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven**: Explicitly focused on protecting democratic values – attracts talent who want meaningful impact in defense.
- **Culture**: Values include “move fast, act with conviction, do what’s right – even when it’s hard”; ground-up playbook, skeptical of conventional wisdom.
- **Growth**: 78% YoY headcount growth, 192 open roles, and rapid internal advancement.
- **Diverse team**: Combines software engineers, deep learning specialists, program managers from top companies (Palantir, Google, Amazon, BAE Systems, McKinsey).
- **Locations**: Hybrid-friendly offices in Munich, London, Paris, Berlin; also remote or flexible for some roles.
- **Perks**: Not explicitly listed, but significant investment in R&D and manufacturing suggests strong resources for tools and equipment.

## Sources
1. [helsing.ai](https://helsing.ai/)
2. [helsing.ai/careers](https://helsing.ai/careers)
3. [linkedin.com/company/helsing](https://www.linkedin.com/company/helsing)
4. [pitchbook.com/profiles/company/481513-60](https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/481513-60)

## Other roles at Helsing

- [Facility Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/facility-coordinator-helsing-munich-fg9e970yzstb) — Munich, Germany
- [(Senior) Programme Manager - Military Exercises](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-programme-manager-military-exercises-helsing-munich-rjyzv1qh72ze) — Munich, Germany
- [Senior Product Graphic Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-graphic-designer-helsing-munich-fa2m455ww22c) — Munich, Germany
- [Communications Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/communications-intern-helsing-paris-ms057mjegp1n) — Paris, France
- [Programme Manager - Air Domain](https://feeny.ai/job/programme-manager-air-domain-helsing-london-wz4vk99n6w6r) — London, United Kingdom
- [Product Manager – Perception & Sensor Fusion](https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-perception-sensor-fusion-helsing-munich-7b23fka33amw) — Munich, Germany
- [Lead Systems Engineer - LO Calculations & Supplier Parts](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-systems-engineer-lo-calculations-supplier-parts-helsing-munich-d6fewtkeprhs) — Munich, Germany
- [Front Office Coordinator / Guest Service Agent (m/w/d)](https://feeny.ai/job/front-office-coordinator-guest-service-agent-m-w-d-helsing-munich-0zyhmhdtsa1t) — Munich, Germany
- [Procurement Project Manager – UK](https://feeny.ai/job/procurement-project-manager-uk-helsing-london-8kzgmjhb21ee) — London, United Kingdom
- [Legal Counsel IT & Privacy](https://feeny.ai/job/legal-counsel-it-privacy-helsing-munich-x2gj6hbz0wy6) — Munich, Germany / Berlin, Germany