Team Lead Enginnering Platform - Kotlin, AI & DevOps

Trust in SODA; Hamburg; Hybrid; EUR 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

30 days holiday

Unlimited vacation

Hybrid work

Learning budget

Mobility allowance

Bike leasing

Company pension

Wellpass

Job summary

Trust in SODA in Hamburg, Germany, is seeking an experienced Engineering Lead for our backend platform. You will lead a high-performing, product-oriented team, own core B2B services at scale and shape architecture while staying hands-on to code and solve problems.

You'll work with Kotlin and Spring Boot, MongoDB and PostgreSQL, microservices and Kubernetes, and explore AI-enabled development. The role offers hybrid work, a strong learning budget and generous benefits to back your impact.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading and developing engineering teams.
• Empowering leadership style with autonomy.
• Hands-on coding with modern backend tech.
• Experience with Kotlin and Spring Boot.
• Experience with MongoDB and/or PostgreSQL.
• Solid understanding of microservices and production systems.
• Experience designing REST APIs and event-driven architectures.
• Hands-on experience with Kafka is a plus.
• Interest in AI and AI-assisted development.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a high-performing, product-oriented backend engineering team.
• Take ownership of core B2B platform services used at significant scale.
• Shape architecture and make important technical decisions with your team, not for your team.
• Stay hands-on: write code, solve problems and get into the details.
• Build and operate microservices following a true “You build it, you run it” mindset.
• Design secure, scalable and maintainable systems with tangible business impact.
• Partner closely with Product Management and other engineering teams.
• Define and align APIs, interfaces and architecture across the wider platform.
• Explore and drive AI-assisted development, including modern agentic AI approaches.
• Help raise the engineering bar through better tooling, practices and ways of working.

Skills

Team Leadership

Leadership

Kotlin

Spring Boot

MongoDB

PostgreSQL

Microservices

Kubernetes

REST APIs

Event-driven

Kafka

AI interest

Agentic AI

Tools

Kubernetes

Job description

Build the platform. Shape the architecture. Lead from the front.

What do millions of users, a fast-growing e-commerce business and some genuinely interesting engineering challenges have in common?

You.

Our client is an established international digital e-commerce company with around 350 employees — but this is far from a traditional online retail environment. Behind the products is a sophisticated technology platform handling scale, complex integrations and critical business processes.

And they’re not standing still.

New digital business models are being built, start-ups are being supported and emerging technologies — including AI — are being explored to create what comes next.

This is where you come in.

What you’ll be working on

• Lead and grow a high-performing, product-oriented backend engineering team
• Take ownership of core B2B platform services used at significant scale
• Shape architecture and make important technical decisions with your team, not for your team
• Stay hands-on: write code, solve problems and get into the details
• Build and operate microservices following a true “You build it, you run it” mindset
• Design secure, scalable and maintainable systems with tangible business impact
• Partner closely with Product Management and other engineering teams
• Define and align APIs, interfaces and architecture across the wider platform
• Explore and drive AI-assisted development, including modern agentic AI approaches
• Help raise the engineering bar through better tooling, practices and ways of working

The technology

If you enjoy modern backend engineering, there’s plenty here to get your teeth into:

What you bring

• Proven experience leading and developing engineering teams
• An empowering leadership style — trust and autonomy over micromanagement
• Strong hands-on experience with Kotlin and Spring Boot
• Experience working with MongoDB and/or PostgreSQL
• Solid understanding of microservices, Kubernetes and production systems
• Experience designing and working with REST APIs and event-driven architectures
• Ideally, hands-on experience with Kafka
• A genuine interest in how AI can change the way software is designed and built
• Experience with agentic AI development practices is a bonus

What’s in it for you?

You’ll get the freedom and trust you’d expect from a modern engineering organisation, backed by the stability of an established international business.

• 30 days’ holiday + unlimited additional vacation days
• Hybrid working and workation opportunities — typically just 3 days per quarter in the office in Hamburg, with travel expenses covered
• €1,500 annual learning & development budget
• €30 monthly mobility allowance + bike leasing
• Company pension scheme
• EGYM WELLPASS for just €25 personal contribution per month
• A culture built around trust, ownership and freedom to make decisions

Why this role?

Because great Engineering Leads should be more than people managers.

If you want to stay technical, influence architecture, build great engineering teams, experiment with AI and see the impact of what you build, this role gives you the space to do exactly that.

You’ll have the opportunity to bring together people, product and technology — and actually shape all three.

If that sounds like the kind of engineering challenge you’ve been waiting for, we’d love to hear from you.