Lead Software Engineer (all genders)

About the job

We seek an experienced Engineering Lead to take full ownership of our Portal development team (Java/Spring Boot + Angular). The Engineering Lead combines technical expertise with people leadership, serving as the technical authority and team lead. They are responsible for team performance, technical direction, people development, hiring, and delivery. Critically, this is a hands-on role – the Lead actively codes and contributes to feature delivery alongside the team, rather than purely managing. This hybrid role requires both strong technical depth and genuine leadership capability.

You

Key Responsibilities
Technical Leadership & Hands-On Development

• Define and execute technical vision and strategy for the Portal platform in close collaboration with the Software Architect
• Work with the Software Architect to make architectural decisions aligned with cloud-native principles and security requirements
• Actively code and contribute to feature development – typically 40-50% hands-on coding
• Take ownership of complex features and technically challenging problems
• Ensure architectural decisions are well-executed and understood by the team
• Establish coding standards and code quality expectations
• Conduct technical reviews and ensure adherence to architectural principles and guidelines set with the Architect
• Stay current with technology landscape and discuss emerging tools and approaches with the Software Architect

People Leadership

• Provide direct feedback, performance management, and career development for team members
• Conduct or participate in hiring and interview process
• Create psychological safety and foster a culture of learning
• Mentor Senior, Professional, and Junior Developers actively
• Address performance issues constructively and promptly

Delivery & Execution

• Partner with Product Owner(s) to refine and prioritize the team roadmap
• Own team's delivery performance and reliability
• Identify blockers and remove impediments to team progress
• Balance feature work, technical debt, and innovation
• Oversee release planning and production quality
• Ensure architectural guidance is translated into team execution

Collaboration with Software Architect

• Work closely with the Software Architect to define and refine platform architecture
• Participate in architecture design reviews and technical strategy discussions
• Communicate team feedback and implementation insights back to the Architect
• Ensure the team understands and properly executes architectural decisions
• Flag emerging technical challenges or constraints that may impact long-term architecture

Required Qualifications
Experience

• Minimum 5-7+ years of professional software development
• Minimum 3+ years in a lead or senior engineering role with people leadership
• Proven track record building and scaling development teams
• Experience delivering complex systems in production
• Demonstrated success mentoring and developing other engineers

Technical Expertise – Portal Stack (Java/Spring Boot + Angular)

• Expert-level: Java, Spring Boot ecosystem, Hibernate, Angular
• Advanced knowledge of: Spring Security, Spring Data JPA, Jersey, Jackson, Drools, Quartz, Jasper Reports
• Strong Angular expertise: components, services, state management, RxJS, performance optimization
• SASS and frontend performance optimization
• Caching strategies (Hazelcast), asynchronous messaging (RabbitMQ), websockets
• Cloud-native architecture: containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), deployment strategies
• Relational database design, SQL optimization, and scaling
• REST API design and security

Cross-Stack Competencies

• Expert security architecture: authentication, authorization, encryption, threat modeling
• Cloud-native patterns: microservices, distributed systems, resilience, scalability
• CI/CD pipeline design and implementation
• Monitoring, observability, and logging strategies
• Automated testing strategies (unit, integration, end-to-end)
• Infrastructure-as-Code and container orchestration

Bonus: Polyglot Capabilities

• Experience with other backends (Python, PHP, Node.js) demonstrates broader thinking
• Understanding of language-agnostic principles and design patterns
• Comfort in a polyglot environment

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Excellent written and verbal communication in English and German
• Strong emotional intelligence and people reading ability
• Proven ability to lead and develop teams
• Excellent problem-solving and decision-making skills
• Comfortable with ambiguity and managing trade-offs
• Mentoring and coaching capability
• Hiring and interview experience