Tech Lead (m/f/d) / Superchat

Superchat; Berlin; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Superchat in Berlin is seeking a backend-leaning Tech Lead to guide a team of 3-4 engineers, owning the architecture and delivering core systems. You will spend significant time designing, building, and enabling your team to perform at their best.

You will lead architecture, code reviews, and delivery while partnering with a Product Manager to translate goals into technical solutions. Strong Java/Kotlin experience and AWS familiarity are a plus; a hybrid presence in Berlin is encouraged.

Qualifications

• 3+ years as a Senior or Staff Engineer.
• Comfortable owning architecture and production systems.
• Experience with JVM and Kotlin; AWS is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to architecture, development and code reviews.
• Lead a team of 3-4 engineers, ensure delivery and quality.
• Collaborate with Product Manager to shape solutions.

Skills

Backend leadership

Java/Kotlin

Architecture design

Team mentoring

AI in development

Tools

Kotlin/Quarkus

AWS

JVM

Job description

At Superchat, we're rebuilding how businesses talk to their customers. The phone call, the contact form, the support ticket: all of it is being replaced by messaging and AI. We're building the platform that runs underneath. Founded in 2020, Superchat has become the platform of choice for 10,000+ businesses worldwide, from globally recognized brands like Allianz, Auto1, Enpal, Danone, and GASAG to the small businesses, dental practices, and one-person startups that need to look bigger than they are. Today, millions of messages flow through Superchat every single day. We started as a unified inbox: one place for every channel a customer might pick, WhatsApp, email, SMS, Instagram. Then ChatGPT happened, and the second chapter began: AI agents that respond across chat, email, and voice at the quality of the best human teams. We're 100 people, profitable, and have raised €18M in funding (last round 4.5 years ago, we've been growing on our own money since). Headquartered in Berlin.

We are hiring a backend-leaning Tech Lead to lead a team of 3-4 engineers and own the tech for a part of Superchat's product. This is a hands-on leadership role: You'll spend roughly half your time designing and building software and the other half enabling your team to perform at its best.

Work directly on architecture, development and important projects while creating the clarity, feedback and environment your engineers need to deliver an excellent product

Who We Want A strong, current backend engineer. You bring 3+ years of experience as a Senior or Staff Engineer and remain deeply involved in software development.

You are comfortable owning, designing and building crucial parts of production systems. Experienced with the JVM ecosystem. You have substantial experience with Java or another JVM language. Kotlin and AWS experience are a plus, since our backend runs on Kotlin/Quarkus. Ready to lead people.

You may already have worked in a hybrid Tech Lead role, have been an Engineering manager for a short time or be taking your first steps in people leadership after successfully owning projects and architecture.

What matters is that you genuiely want to help people grow Strong at delivery. You know how to turn product goals into reality. You are used to work in fast-paced startups and are a driver to increase velocity. Product-minded. You care about solving the customers problem. You engage with product decisions, challenge assumptions constructivly and find pragmatic solutions to build things in a lean way. Clear communicator. You are able to explain complex technical things in details to Engineers and in an understandable way to non-technical stakeholders. You create alignment and motivate people Excited about AI-assisted development. You are already using AI in your development workflow and are eager to explore how it can improve engineering speed, quality and the way teams work.

Who We Don't Want Pure people manager.

You no longer want work directly on software. This role requires meaningful, ongoing involvement in architecture, implementation, code review, and technical problem-solving. Hero engineer. You want to make every important technical decision yourself or become the bottleneck for the team. Your job is to raise the effectiveness of the whole team, not to be the only person who can solve difficult problems.

Pure delivery manager.

You treat engineering as a ticketing operation focused only on timelines and task tracking instead of product quality, technical health, and team growth. We need engineering leaders, not project coordinators.

Remote-only operator. You prefer fully remote work and don't want to actively build relationships and culture in person with the team. We believe strong engineering leadership requires regular in-person collaboration and presence in Berlin.

Your Day To Day Spend approximately 50% of your time contributing directly to architecture, development, code reviews, and important technical projects. Lead a team of 3-4 engineers and take responsibility for its effectiveness, technical quality, and delivery. Work closely with your Product Manager to understand customer problems, shape solutions, scope projects, and set priorities. Establish clear technical direction while enabling engineers to own decisions and develop their judgment. Run regular 1:1s, give actionable feedback, and support each engineer's development and performance. Remove blockers, manage dependencies, and help the team identify delivery risks early. Improve engineering practices and explore effective uses of AI throughout the software-development lifecycle. Contribute to hiring through technical interviews, structured feedback, and candidate conversations.

Stakeholders Director of Engineering : Your manager and partner on people development, calibration, processes. Direct Reports : Engineers in your team; you own their development, performance and growth Product Manager : PMs own what and why; you own how (delivery) and who (peopl