Founding Engineering Team Lead (HandsOn)
HybridBerlin, State of Berlin, Germany
Job Summary
Lead and grow a small, high-performing engineering team while designing, building, and reviewing production backend code in GoLang. Own the engineering roadmap, set architecture direction, and establish lightweight processes that enable fast execution without bureaucracy. Mentor engineers through code reviews and pairing, remove blockers across backend, frontend, data, and DevOps, and collaborate closely with CEO and product leadership on technical decisions. Build the security platform from scratch, partner with AI engineers on secure service boundaries, and troubleshoot complex production incidents. This founding role reports directly to CEO and CPTO, focusing on building core security, identity, and enforcement foundations for a next-generation AI-powered risk management platform in Berlin.
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience
- 3+ years of experience leading engineering teams while remaining hands-on
- 3+ years of GoLang experience
- 3+ years experience with AWS in production environments
- Strong code quality bar and experience with architectural reviews
- Ability to context-switch between technical topics and people leadership
- Strong execution mindset and comfort operating under ambiguity
- Hands-on coding mentality; can build things from scratch including security architecture yourself
- Hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes (EKS) and containerized workloads
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or similar)
- Experience with monitoring, logging, observability (Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus)
- Experience supporting production SaaS platforms
- High ownership mentality, startup mindset, and ability to move quickly
- Experience in startup or scale-up environments
- Low ego, high commitment, and a true tech startup mentality
- Excellent English communication skills
Desired Qualifications
- Previous experience as a founding or early-stage Engineering Manager
- Experience in cybersecurity, identity, or enterprise SaaS platforms
- Exposure to DevOps, SRE, or data engineering
- Experience scaling teams and systems simultaneously
- Experience with security architecture, identity security, or security engineering
- Familiarity with compliance frameworks (NIS2, DORA, ISO 27001, SOC 2)
- Understanding of OAuth/OIDC, API tokens, IdP, scopes, SSO, SCIM, roles, RBAC/ABAC, service accounts
- Familiarity with cloud identity and security controls (e.g. IAM, CloudTrail, Azure Active Directory / Entra ID)
- Hands-on with SIEM platforms such as Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, or IBM QRadar
- Experience designing permission models, identity graphs, or access control frameworks
- Knowledge of tokenization, Zero Trust principles, least privilege, and continuous verification
- Experience with Security related to AI/LLM systems, agent logic, or willingness to learn fast
- Familiarity with AI agent behavior, LLM security, or agent sandboxing
- Previous experience in cybersecurity, identity startups
- You are a fan of rock or metal music
- Excellent German communication skills
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