Technical Lead, CMS Backend (100%)

Tamedia; Zürich; On-site; CHF 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Five weeks vacation

Flexible working

Birthday day off

Health services and wellness programs

Unpaid vacation up to six months

Half days off before holidays

Referral bonus

Digital subscriptions & print offers

Job summary

Tamedia seeks a Technical Lead to own Unity’s backend codebase and technical roadmap, guiding a four-engineer team in Zurich and Belgrade. This hands-on role combines architecture, development and mentorship to keep the CMS future-ready.

You’ll shape backend services in Java 25, Spring Boot 4, JPA, MariaDB, RabbitMQ and Elasticsearch, define quality standards, drive CI/CD, and collaborate with product owners to deliver editorial workflows and AI-assisted tooling.

Qualifications

• Hands-on backend engineering with breadth in distributed systems.
• Mastery of Java/Spring Boot and databases.
• Familiarity with modern architectural patterns and performance.
• Leadership experience with coaching/mentoring.
• English in tech team; German helpful but not required.

Responsibilities

• Own the backend architecture and roadmap for Unity CMS.
• Lead a four-engineer team in Zurich and Belgrade; mentor and coach.
• Design, develop and maintain backend services, APIs and messaging patterns.
• Define code quality standards, best practices, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Modernize legacy CMS components while keeping delivery smooth.
• Enable editorial workflows with AI-assisted tooling and updates.
• Balance hands-on engineering with team leadership and reviews.
• Collaborate with engineers and product owners to gather requirements.

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

Distributed systems

Event-driven architecture

Team leadership

CI/CD

Tools

MariaDB

RabbitMQ

Elasticsearch

JPA

Job description

Tamedia helps people understand what is happening – locally, within Switzerland, and in the world. Behind every story — the breaking news alert, the long-form investigation, the live updates during an election night — is our home-grown CMS, Unity. Unity is constantly evolving and built on Java and Spring Boot, and it's the system that powers our newsrooms.

We're looking for a Technical Lead to own Unity’s codebase, architecture and technical roadmap, to lead the four engineers who build it with you, and to collaborate with other teams and product owners. This is a hands-on engineering role, and you'll also make sure the system, and the team, keep getting better.

What you can expect:

• Own the backend architecture. Our stack is Java 25, Spring Boot 4, JPA, MariaDB, RabbitMQ, and Elasticsearch, among others.
• Lead your team of four engineers in Zurich and Belgrade. Grow your people. Provide mentorship, technical coaching and general support for your team. Make sure the team runs smoothly and efficiently.
• Be responsible for designing, developing and maintaining performant backend services, APIs, messaging patterns and integration flows
• Define code quality standards, best practices, CI/CD pipelines, and keep improving DX.
• Modernize what needs it. Parts of the CMS carry real history. Lead refactoring and modernization work that keeps the platform future-ready — without grinding general delivery to a halt.
• Ship faster for editorial. Our newsrooms' needs evolve constantly — new formats, new workflows, AI-assisted tooling. You'll make sure the backend is an enabler for that, not a bottleneck.
• Split your week roughly evenly between hands-on engineering and leading the team — system design, reviews, pairing, coding, coaching.
• Collaborate with other engineers and product owners to gather requirements and design solutions and their roadmap.

We are looking for:

• Deep, hands-on backend engineering experience, with real technical range: distributed systems, event-driven architecture, and have the judgment to find the right tools versus resume-driven designs.
• Mastery of Java / Spring Boot / Databases.
• Fluency in modern architectural patterns, and overall system performance.
• Familiarity with Unix/Linux is a plus.
• First leadership experience and a genuine interest in people leadership — coaching and mentoring first, formal management second.
• Our technology department functions in English; German is useful, but not essential.

Unity CMS supports hundreds of journalists every single day.

We're a progressive tech org sitting inside a media company navigating real industry pressure — which is part of what makes this interesting. We're integrating AI into our products, we care about good engineering culture, and yes — we still believe good journalism matters for democracy, and that the backend nobody sees is part of what makes that possible.

• Five weeks vacation with option for seven weeks and vacation purchase
• Flexible working models and mobile office options (2 days per week at 100%)
• Paid day off on birthday
• Wide range of free health promotion services (social counseling, health coach app, flu vaccination, various trainings)
• Possibility for unpaid vacation up to max. six months
• Additional half days off before certain holidays
• Referral program: Up to CHF 2'000 reward
• Free digital subscriptions and discounted print offers