Engineering Teamlead – Platform, Kotlin & AI

Engineering Teamlead – Platform, Kotlin & AI

If you enjoy leading engineers but still want to be close to the technology, this could be a good fit.

Our client is an established international e-commerce company with around 350 employees and millions of users. The business has grown well beyond a traditional online shop, with a technology platform supporting a range of digital products, B2B services and complex business processes.

The engineering teams are continuing to evolve the platform, improve how they work and explore where technologies such as AI can genuinely help. You’ll join at a point where there is already a solid foundation, but plenty of room to make things better.

As an Engineering Lead, you’ll lead a backend platform team while staying technically involved. You’ll work with the team on architecture, make technical decisions together, and help create an environment where engineers have the trust and ownership to do their best work.

What you’ll be working on

• Lead and develop a backend engineering team working on core platform services
• Work with the team on architecture and important technical decisions
• Stay hands-on and contribute to the code when it makes sense
• Build and operate microservices using a “you build it, you run it” approach
• Develop secure, scalable and maintainable systems used at significant scale
• Work closely with Product Management and other engineering teams
• Help align APIs, interfaces and architectural decisions across the platform
• Improve engineering practices, tooling and ways of working
• Explore how AI-assisted development can be useful in the day-to-day work of the team

The technology

Kotlin · Spring Boot · Microservices · Kubernetes · MongoDB · PostgreSQL · REST APIs · Event-Driven Architecture · Kafka · AI-assisted Development · DevOps

What you bring

• Experience leading and developing engineering teams
• A leadership style based on trust, autonomy and clear communication
• Strong hands-on experience with Kotlin and Spring Boot
• Experience with MongoDB and/or PostgreSQL
• Good knowledge of microservices, Kubernetes and production systems
• Experience working with REST APIs and event-driven architectures
• Experience with Kafka is a plus
• An interest in AI-assisted software development and how it can improve engineering workflows
• Experience with agentic AI development is a nice-to-have, not a requirement

What you’ll get

The company combines the stability of an established international business with a fairly pragmatic and flexible engineering environment.

• 30 days’ holiday plus unlimited additional vacation days
• Hybrid working and workation opportunities – typically just 3 days per quarter in the Hamburg office, with travel expenses covered
• €1,500 annual learning and development budget
• €30 monthly mobility allowance plus bike leasing
• Company pension scheme
• EGYM WELLPASS for a €25 personal contribution per month
• Plenty of trust and freedom to make decisions
• An environment where engineers are encouraged to take ownership rather than simply follow instructions

Why this role?

It’s a good option if you don’t want to move completely away from engineering just because you move into leadership.

You’ll be responsible for the team, but you’ll also have a say in the technology, architecture and way of working. You can stay close to the code, support your engineers and help shape a platform that is already operating at significant scale.

And while AI is part of the conversation, you don’t need to be an AI expert. What matters is being curious about new ways of working and being able to recognise where technology can actually make a difference.

If that sounds like the kind of role you’d enjoy, we’d be happy to tell you more.