Principal Software Engineer

Reptune; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 100,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Empowerment and autonomy

Hybrid work arrangement

Professional development

Modern tech & equipment

International team

Long-term contract prospects

Job summary

Reptune in Amsterdam seeks a hands-on principal engineer to own the architecture of a major platform rebuild and production reliability. You will set direction for the engineering org, code on risky components and mentor the near-shore team and senior engineers.

You bring 10+ years in software, deep backend and cloud-native expertise, and the ability to make tough design choices with business impact. English fluency and hybrid work two–three days in Amsterdam are required.

Qualifications

• At least 10 years of software engineering with end-to-end architecture ownership.
• Principals or staff-level influence through design docs and mentoring.
• Deep backend and cloud-native expertise; architectural judgment matters.
• Experience with production systems, SLOs and incident leadership.
• Excellent written communication and ability to work with cross-functional teams.
• Business-minded with ability to connect technical decisions to client value.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and production quality of the platform on which everything else is built.
• Define the target architecture for the platform rebuild and plan migration.
• Document major decisions: build vs buy, stack, service boundaries, tenancy.
• Set engineering standards for code review, testing, CI/CD and IaC.
• Own platform reliability: SLOs, observability, incident response and cloud cost.
• Mentor and elevate the near-shore team and senior engineers through design reviews.

Skills

End-to-end architecture

Principal/Staff influence

Backend engineering

Cloud-native

Kubernetes experience

SLOs & production readiness

Distributed/near-shore teams

Written communication

English fluency

Tools

Kubernetes

CI/CD pipelines

Infrastructure as Code

Cloud platforms

Job description

Reptune is the transfer pricing platform that keeps multinational tax teams in control. In one place, they produce and manage their transfer pricing documentation, stay current with local rules in every country they operate in, and keep a full audit trail, saving time now and when a tax authority asks. The expertise is already built in, by people who do transfer pricing, so teams never start from a blank page.

Reptune is headquartered in Amsterdam and has partnered with investment firm Vortex Capital Partners since 2024. We serve leading multinationals including IKEA, NXP and Randstad. What makes us distinctive is our team: engineers building the platform side by side with our in-house transfer pricing advisers, many of whom did this work by hand before they built it into software. We are open by design: in-house teams own the process, and advisers build on the platform rather than compete with it. We are growing internationally and expanding the platform, so the decisions you make here reach real clients quickly.

The role & you

You are the most senior engineer at Reptune and the technical owner of the new architecture and the platform rebuild that everything else depends on.

You are intellectually curious, pragmatic and comfortable operating where there is no obvious right answer. You dig into unfamiliar problems, challenge assumptions and make reasoned decisions with incomplete information rather than waiting for certainty. You know when engineering rigour matters and when simplicity wins. You are willing to take calculated technical risks, explain the trade-offs clearly and change course when the evidence says you were wrong. You care about the business and the people using what you build, not technology for technology’s sake.

You set technical direction for the whole engineering organisation, make the irreversible design decisions and own how the platform runs in production. This is a hands-on principal role: you code on the riskiest parts and lead through design documents, standards and mentoring, raising the bar for our near-shore team and senior engineers alike.

You are a principal-level engineer who has owned the architecture of a significant platform or rebuild end to end, and whose influence demonstrably reaches beyond your own team: direction set through writing, standards adopted by others and engineers who grew under your mentoring. You are comfortable being the most senior technical voice in the room, including saying no to leadership with good reasons. Azure experience, experience modernising a legacy platform under live traffic and exposure to AI/LLM system architecture are a plus.

This role is hybrid: you work from our Amsterdam HQ two to three days a week, and from home the rest. You will report to the CTO.

What you will be doing

• You own the architecture and production quality of the platform everything else is built on.
• Own the target architecture for the platform rebuild and sequence the migration path.
• Make and document the major technical decisions: build versus buy, stack, service boundaries, tenancy.
• Set engineering standards for code review, testing, CI/CD, infrastructure as code and production readiness.
• Own platform reliability: SLOs, observability, incident response and cloud cost.
• Lead and level up the engineering organisation, including the near-shore team and the Senior Software Engineers, through design reviews and mentoring.

What we are looking for

• At least 10 years of software engineering, including end-to-end architecture ownership of a significant platform or rebuild.
• Proven principal- or staff-level influence through design docs, standards and mentoring across teams.
• Deep backend and cloud-native expertise: containerised platforms, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, API and data architecture. Experience with Kubernetes or comparable cloud orchestration platforms is valuable, but sound architectural judgement matters more than allegiance to a particular stack.
• Experience running production systems: SLOs, incident leadership, operational excellence.
• Effectiveness with distributed or near-shore teams, and excellent written communication.
• Strong product and business judgement: able to connect technical decisions to client value, delivery speed, operational risk and company priorities.
• Business fluent in English.

What we offer and what you can expect

• Empowerment and autonomy: At Reptune, your ideas matter. We give you the freedom to shape the product, challenge the status quo and see your decisions reach real enterprise clients quickly.
• Hybrid by design: Work from our Amsterdam HQ two to three days a week and from home the rest: enough time together for real collaboration, enough flexibility to focus.
• Professional development: We actively invest in your growth through training, conferences and internal knowledge-sharing, empowering you to deepen your craft and expand your impact.
• Modern tech and equipment: We provide the modern equipment and tooling you need for comfortable, productive work.
• Fantastic colleagues: A close-knit, international team that cares about its craft, its clients and each other.
• A long-term perspective: Enjoy the security and long-term prospects of a contract with the genuine intention of a permanent role as the match proves itself, at a growing scale-up with serious ambitions.
• Salary: EUR 100,000 - 140,000 gross per year, depending on experience.