Principal Engineer

Solaris; Sweden; On-site; SEK 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Home office budget

Learning & development budget of €1000

Competitive salary and variable bonus

Monthly meal allowance

Deutschland ticket subsidy

28 vacation days + step increments

Opportunity to work abroad up to 12 4e

Job summary

Solaris is seeking a Senior Technical Leader to design and evolve scalable micro-services and platforms. You will guide architecture, drive DevOps practices, ensure reliability, and mentor engineers across multiple teams in a cloud-native environment.

Principal responsibilities include aligning domain teams, establishing standards, and translating business goals into technical requirements while communicating with stakeholders in English (German a plus).

Qualifications

• Bachelor degree in Computer Science or equivalent.
• 10+ years of total professional experience in Software Engineering.
• 3+ years in a Technical Leadership role driving decisions across multiple teams.
• Proven track record of designing and evolving high-traffic, distributed systems or APIs.
• Experience operating in a DevOps/You-Build-It-You-Run-It culture.
• Ability to read, review, and debug code in multiple modern languages (e.g., Java, Go).
• Deep expertise in distributed, high-throughput systems and architectural patterns.
• Ability to evolve monolithic or legacy systems into modern architectures without disruption.
• Advanced understanding of container ecosystems and orchestration; cloud-agnostic design.
• Everything as Code and guiding teams in complex infrastructure.
• Ability to execute and guide others through unclear goals without supervision.
• Excellent written and verbal English (German is a plus).
• Ability to influence roadmaps without direct managerial authority.
• Curious learner who shares knowledge via talks, docs, and coaching.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of complex, distributed micro-services and platforms focusing on scalability, resilience, and maintainability.
• Ensure architecturally inter-connected teams are aligned and facilitate information flow between domain teams and the wider tech organization.
• Drive high-level technology decisions including framework selection and cloud strategy.
• Take accountability for reliability, security, and performance of micro-services and platform capabilities.
• Establish coding standards, review guidelines, and architectural patterns.
• Contribute to IaC, CI/CD pipelines, and observability tools.
• Lead resolution of complex cross-team technical incidents and conduct blameless post-mortems.
• Mentor teammates through technical sponsorship, pair programming, and coaching.
• Translate complex technical topics into business value for Product Owners and stakeholders.

Skills

Software engineering

Technical leadership

Distributed systems

DevOps

Java

Go

CI/CD

Infrastructure as Code

Kubernetes

Cloud-native

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Solaris is Europe's leading embedded finance platform. Solaris’ full German banking license and proprietary modular B2B tech stack empowers its partners – from SMEs to large, multinational, non-financial companies – to offer compliant, customer-centric banking services, providing seamless experiences to customers across all industries. Founded in 2016, Solaris pioneered the Banking-as-a-Service market with an unparalleled combination of tech and banking. Solaris is headquartered in Berlin and employs 300 people in Europe.

Your Role

• Lead the design of complex, distributed micro-services and platforms, focusing on scalability, resilience, and maintainability.
• Ensure architecturally inter-connected teams are aligned; facilitate bi-directional information flow between domain teams and the wider tech organization.
• Drive high-level technology decisions, including framework selection, cloud infrastructure strategy, and third-party integrations.
• Take accountability for the reliability, security, and performance of the fleet of micro-services and platform capabilities.
• Establish and enforce coding standards, code review guidelines, and architectural patterns to ensure high-quality delivery.
• Contribute to and champion infrastructure-as-code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, and observability tools to maximize developer efficiency.
• Lead the resolution of complex, cross-team technical incidents and conduct blameless post-mortems to prevent recurrence.
• Help teammates grow as craftspeople through technical mentorship, pair programming, and sponsorship.
• Translate complex technical topics into business value for Product Owners and stakeholders; translate business goals into technical requirements for engineers.

We’d love to see

Depending on your level of experience, your responsibilities and scope of role will range. We don’t care much about fancy titles, but rather about real personal and professional development, as laid out in our learning framework. Let’s figure together out how you can contribute to our team.

• A bachelor degree in Computer Science or equivalent.
• 10+ years of total professional experience in Software Engineering.
• 3+ years in a Technical Leadership role (e.g., Staff, Principal, Lead Architect) driving technical decisions across multiple teams or critical systems.
• Proven track record of designing and evolving high-traffic, distributed systems or APIs.
• Experience operating in a DevOps/You‑Build‑It‑You‑Run‑It culture.
• Possess the ability to read, review, and debug code in multiple modern languages (e.g., Java, Go) and adapt to the right tool for the job.
• Deep expertise in designing distributed, high-throughput systems. Proven ability to select appropriate architectural patterns (e.g., Event-Driven, Microservices, CQRS, Hexagonal Architecture) based on business requirements and trade-offs.
• Ability to evolve monolithic or legacy systems into modern architectures using different design patterns, without disrupting business continuity.
• Advanced understanding of the container ecosystem and orchestration strategies. Capable of designing services that are truly cloud-agnostic and scalable.
• Philosophically aligned with "Everything as Code." Capable of guiding teams in managing complex infrastructure.
• Ability to execute, deliver, and guide others through unclear goals and complex problem spaces without supervision.
• Excellent written and verbal English (German is a plus). Able to explain trade-offs (e.g., Consistency vs. Availability) to non-technical audiences.
• Ability to influence roadmaps and engineering culture without direct managerial authority.
• A curious, constant learner who proactively shares knowledge via tech talks, documentation, and coaching.

Benefits

• Home office budget.
• Learning & development budget of €1000 per year and a transparent growth framework to support your career goals.
• Competitive salary and a variable remuneration program.
• Monthly meal allowance.
• Deutschland ticket subsidy.
• 28 vacation days, increasing by 2 days after 2 years and 3 days after 3 years with Solaris.
• Opportunity to work abroad for up to 12 weeks per year.

While job ads usually paint an ideal picture of a candidate, studies show that most applicants meet an average of 60% of the criteria. Unfortunately, many promising candidates tend to apply only if they meet all the criteria. So if you think you have what it takes, but don't necessarily meet every single item in the job description, please contact us anyway. We’d love to talk with you and find out if you might be a good fit for us.

At Solaris, we are committed to nurturing an inclusive environment, where all Solarians feel valued, respected and supported. We are dedicated to building a diverse workforce that reflects the diversity of our communities. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of color, ethnicity, religion, sex, origin, disability, marital status, …