Backend Team Lead

Smart Host GmbH
Berlin, Germany
27 days ago

Role details

Contract type
Permanent contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Working hours
Regular working hours
Languages
English, German
Experience level
Senior

Job location

Berlin, Germany

Tech stack

Clean Code Principles
Java
API
Artificial Intelligence
Business Logic
Cloud Engineering
Software Quality
Code Review
Cursor (Graphical User Interface Elements)
Programming Tools
Distributed Systems
Gradle
Message Oriented Middleware
Systems Integration
Spring-boot
Technical Debt
Backend
Kubernetes
Terraform

Job description

  • Technical Leadership: Lead and mentor a team of backend engineers, supporting a culture of ownership, transparency, and continuous learning.
  • Architectural Ownership: Own the backend services, APIs, integrations, and business logic behind our core hospitality platform, ensuring the system is built for scale and resilience.
  • Manage Complexity: Identify and reduce technical debt, improve existing systems, and rethink architecture when necessary.
  • AI-Augmented Engineering Culture: Champion the team's use of modern AI development tools, helping engineers integrate them into their daily workflow while maintaining high standards for code quality and architectural integrity.

Requirements

  • Relevant Leadership Experience: You have 7+ years of professional backend engineering experience, including 2+ years leading engineers through mentoring, code reviews, knowledge sharing, and team development.
  • Strong Java Background: You are highly proficient in Java and have deep experience with the Spring Boot ecosystem.
  • Cloud Native: You have experience with Kubernetes and modern backend tooling, including Helm, Terraform, and Gradle.
  • Systems Thinker: You understand the fundamentals of networking, distributed computing, and asynchronous messaging.
  • Ownership Mindset: You take responsibility beyond your immediate task and dig deep into the stack to find and fix the source of a problem.
  • Pragmatic Engineer: You care about clean code and refactoring but understand the balance between perfection and time-to-market in a startup.
  • AI-Forward Mindset: You're hands-on with AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, agentic workflows) and have opinions on using them well. You see them as a force multiplier for senior engineers, not a gimmick, and you have a point of view on what they're good at and where they still fall short.
  • Fluency in English: You communicate fluently in English, both verbally and in writing. German skills are an advantage.
  • Entitlement to work in Germany: You are legally entitled to work in Germany and do not require visa sponsorship. For legal hiring reasons, we can only consider candidates based in Germany for this role.

Benefits & conditions

  • Real impact: You will have direct influence on technical decisions, architecture, and the growth of our backend team.
  • Hybrid or remote within Germany: Work hybrid from our Berlin office or remotely from within Germany. We occasionally bring the team together in Berlin for workshops, planning, and collaboration.
  • Team culture: Join a diverse, multicultural team with an open office culture and a few four-legged colleagues.
  • Smart Host Days - Team Travel: Once a year, we take the whole team on a trip abroad. The trip combines team bonding, training, and the chance to live our mission: making vacation smart.

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