Jobs in Kiel, Germany

UK or Germany

Full time

Remote

Product Design Engineering

We're hiring a Member of Technical Staff (Backend/Infra) at Ona.

As a product engineer, you'll build the systems and experiences that make software development seamless while driving real value for developers and businesses. You'll work across our entire stack (Go, React, cloud infrastructure) to solve meaningful problems for platform teams and engineers, always focused on delivering tangible impact. This role is for technical generalists who combine deep expertise with effective agency across the stack. You'll take end-to-end ownership of critical systems while maintaining our high bar for pragmatic, maintainable solutions.

Five years ago, we set out to create a world where every software engineer is instantly ready-to-code. With over 2 million users, we are now the leading platform for standardized and automated development environments. In 2024, we quadrupled enterprise revenue, signed several seven-figure contracts with F500 companies, launched our AI-first product architecture and, most importantly, discovered our authentic rhythm. In 2025, we will prepare the world to become software conductors with Ona.

We're a talent-dense group of people who transform how software is created, working to empower every company, every team, and every individual to succeed in a software-first world. We've found product-market-fit and are scaling with high velocity towards repeatable go-to-market fit.

We care deeply, and for many of us, building Ona is our life's work. Our operating principles are an honest representation of how we build relationships and make decisions. We choose colleagues carefully based on merit and their authentic alignment with these principles.

If you're energized by the above, we'd love for you to apply!

Our operating principles are a core responsibility of every role. We expect anyone that joins the team to take an active part in forming and enhancing our culture by living out these principles and holding others accountable towards them.

In addition, here are the main areas of focus:

• Drive technical initiatives end-to-end. Balance immediate needs with long-term sustainability while maintaining high standards for reliability and simplicity.
• Shape comprehensive user experiences. Partner with product and design teams to deeply understand problems and deliver impactful features, including documentation and go-to-market strategy.
• Own core Ona systems. Ensure reliability and continuous evolution of your focus area, whether frontend, backend, or infrastructure.
• Elevate engineering best practices. Contribute to code reviews, architecture discussions, and documentation to raise overall quality and consistency.
• Solve high-impact technical challenges. Identify and address performance bottlenecks, reliability issues, and developer experience improvements across the stack.

At the end of your first 30 days, you will have:

• Ship code on day one using Ona to build Ona
• Built deep understanding of Ona's core value proposition and architecture through hands-on contribution, user interviews, and key system analysis. Able to articulate main technical and business challenges.
• Shipped multiple meaningful improvements across the stack, demonstrating ability to navigate our codebase, deployment processes, and engineering principles effectively.
• Established strong working relationships within your direct team and adjacent teams (e.g. Go-to-Market, Sales) through collaborative problem-solving and technical discussions. Started contributing to architecture and design discussions.
• Completed an in-depth analysis of a core system component in your focus area and crafted a design doc outlining a proposed solution to a key problem.
• Opened the drawer and challenged the CTO on a design idea.

• You work in alignment with our operating principles.
• You drive pragmatic engineering excellence. You have strong technical judgment that helps you identify the right level of investment for each situation - knowing when to build for scale and when to optimize for speed. You consistently deliver high-quality solutions while remaining pragmatic about trade-offs. Most importantly, you're a generalist who can contribute effectively across our stack while bringing deep expertise in your chosen focus area.
• You build high-impact systems. When building systems, you start by deeply understanding the problem space, the designing a solution. You have a track record of delivering outcomes that not only work well technically, but drive meaningful value for users and the business. You think holistically about the entire product experience including performance, documentation, user workflows, and operational concerns.
• You lead through execution. You drive results through a combination of technical expertise, clear communication, and strong execution. You're comfortable taking ownership of complex problems and leading them through to completion, bringing others along through influence rather than authority. You have a proven track record of delivering significant technical initiatives while helping raise the bar for the entire engineering organization.

• Track record of shipping and owning production systems at scale
• Experience working across the stack effectively
• Evidence of pragmatic technical decision-making and leadership
• Fast learner with demonstrated ability to pick up new technologies

Backend Systems:

• Strong Go experience
• Track record of distributed systems and API design
• Experience with data systems (PostgreSQL, Redis)
• Proxy companies: GitHub, Netlify, HashiCorp, Elastic, MongoDB, Confluent

Infrastructure:

• Deep Linux and cloud platform expertise
• Experience building developer tools/platforms
• Strong systems and networking foundation
• Proxy companies: AWS, DigitalOcean, Docker, Fly.io, Pulumi, Render

Note: if you are more specialized in one over the other (backend vs infrastructure), please still apply!

• Notion, Slack
• Excel, Google Sheets
• Claude, ChatGPT
• GitHub, VS Code, Cursor
• Observability: Grafana, Prometheus
• CI/CD practices
• API design (REST, gRPC)

Backend Systems:

• Go, gRPC/Connect
• PostgreSQL, Redis
• Git, Linux
• Some frontend exposure (React, TypeScript helpful)

Infrastructure:

• Linux, Git
• AWS (primary), some GCP/Azure
• Go
• Infrastructure automation tools (CloudFormation, Terraform)
• Container technologies

• Remote-first, flexible work day
• Flexible paid time off including holidays that are most meaningful to you
• Parental leave for all parents
• Employee-friendly equity terms (extended exercise)
• Health insurance (country-specific)
• Retirement (country-specific)
• Wellness allowance
• Premium work-from-home equipment
• Regular company off-sites

We are remote-first and so is our hiring process. Contingent on schedules, we aim to complete the entire process in about 2 weeks. We are conscious of your time and are committed to being as efficient as possible.

1. We'll kick the process off with an intro call to see if there is mutual interest in moving forward.
2. Next, you'll complete a series of interviews designed to thoroughly evaluate our mutual compatibility.
   • CTO
   • Head of People
   • Peer chat
   • Project and panel presentation
   • CEO
3. References and background check - Before moving to an offer, we’ll set up video calls with 3 direct managers and/or senior leaders that can speak to your performance. Additionally, we will run a full background check (location dependent).