Manager Application Software Engineering

Do you get energized by building high-performing teams and delivering systems that work in the real world? Do you combine strong programming skills with the ability to lead, scale, and drive execution? Are you excited to contribute to a technology inflection at the intersection of AI, real-time systems, and human motion — with applications ranging from health and sports to next-generation robotics? We’d love to have you! Who is Xsens Xsens is a leading full-stack provider of sensors, software, and analytics that enable the digitization of movement. Xsens serves the entertainment, humanoid robotics, health & sports and automation & mobility markets. By turning complex motion data into actionable insight, we help our partners accelerate development, improve control and learning, and bring physically intelligent systems to life. We collaborate with leading global innovators including Boston Dynamics, Toyota, Siemens, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Netflix, and 20th Century Studios, alongside more than 1,000 research institutions, humanoid robotics companies and universities worldwide. Your role as Manager Application Software Engineering at Xsens As Manager Application Software Engineering, you lead and empower a focused, high-impact team building applications on top of Xsens’ motion platform. Your team develops applications that capture, process, and visualize human motion data, leveraging the Motion Engine as the core platform via the MVN SDK. These applications are central to Xsens’ product offering and have direct impact across health, sports, research, and emerging robotics use cases. You combine technical leadership, hands-on engineering, and strong execution. You remain deeply involved in critical parts of the system, leading by example in architecture, performance, and complex problem-solving. You drive predictable delivery, foster AI-augmented engineering as a structural advantage, and build a culture of ownership, focus, and continuous improvement. Your team operates in an Agile, Kanban-based environment, focused on continuous flow and a predictable monthly release cadence across applications, SDKs, and platforms. You work closely with the Software Architect and senior engineers driving platform evolution, ensuring that application development remains aligned, stable, and focused while platform changes are introduced. You will work on a mature and widely used software platform that has evolved over many years and continues to grow in capability and scale. Together with senior engineers driving platform evolution, you will ensure that ongoing development remains stable, predictable, and focused, while the system is continuously improved and modernized. You will play a key role in shaping the next generation of motion technology, at the intersection of real-time systems, AI, and human motion. Key challenges: Inspire, coach, and develop the Application Software team, fostering a culture of ownership, accountability, and technical excellence Drive end-to-end delivery of production-ready systems, ensuring solutions work reliably in real-world environments Take ownership of day-to-day execution, ensuring work progresses consistently, priorities are clear, and blockers are actively resolved Own and drive a predictable monthly release cadence, ensuring the team consistently meets delivery commitments with high quality Lead and evolve a Kanban-based workflow, optimizing flow, reducing bottlenecks, and improving cycle time and predictability, while working closely with Product Management to ensure clear priorities, planning alignment, and delivery commitments Protect the focus of key contributors by reducing interruptions, managing priorities, and preventing unnecessary context switching Balance ongoing platform evolution with feature delivery, ensuring improvements do not negatively impact delivery commitments Reduce regressions and unintended side effects by strengthening testing, integration practices, and engineering discipline in a complex codebase Drive system-level integration across applications, MVN SDK, Motion Engine, and embedded/hardware components Leverage AI as a force multiplier for engineering output, accelerating development, improving quality, and reducing cycle time Improve engineering excellence by enhancing CI/CD pipelines, test automation, code quality and maintainability Increase the team’s delivery capability and output by improving systems, focus, and developer productivity — without increasing team size