Team Lead - AI-Native DevEco IDE & Agentic Developer Tooling

This is a founding leadership role with significant ownership across team building, technical direction, research strategy and external collaboration.

The team will focus on future-facing research, rapid prototyping, technology scouting and evaluation of emerging developer-tooling technologies. The role is not centred on large-scale production engineering; instead, it focuses on identifying promising technical directions, validating concepts and supporting long-term product and technology decisions.

A key area of focus is how software developers and AI agents collaborate within modern development environments, including AI-assisted coding, agent orchestration, context management, verification and developer experience.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Define the technical vision and research direction for next-generation AI-native IDEs and developer tooling.
• Identify emerging technologies and assess their relevance to future developer workflows.
• Set technical standards and ensure high-quality research and prototyping across the team.
• Translate technical findings into clear recommendations for product and engineering stakeholders.

AI-Native Developer Tooling

• Research and evaluate emerging IDE platforms, AI coding assistants and agentic software development systems.
• Explore how AI agents can interact with developers, source code, build systems, testing infrastructure and development environments.
• Investigate areas such as:
• Context engineering
• Agent orchestration
• Tool use
• Code generation
• Verification and evaluation
• Automated debugging
• AI-assisted development workflows

Prototyping and Technology Evaluation

• Build proof-of-concept prototypes and technical demonstrations for emerging developer-tooling concepts.
• Evaluate competing technologies, architectures and approaches.
• Produce technology scouting reports and technical assessments to support strategic decisions.
• Assess emerging developer tools critically from both technical and user-experience perspectives.

External Collaboration

• Build relationships with universities, research institutes, startups and industry experts.
• Track research and commercial developments across the developer-tools ecosystem.
• Identify opportunities for external collaboration, technology transfer and joint research.

Team Leadership

• Recruit and build a small team of senior engineers and researchers.
• Mentor team members and provide technical guidance.
• Take responsibility for team direction, research quality and technical output.
• Support hiring decisions and help shape the long-term capability of the team.

• Strong hands-on experience in one or more of the following:
• IDE development
• Developer-tooling platforms
• Agentic coding systems
• AI developer infrastructure
• Proven experience leading engineers, researchers or technical teams.
• Experience contributing to hiring and team-building decisions.
• Strong understanding of developer experience and the characteristics of effective, practical and intuitive developer tools.
• Ability to connect detailed technical work with broader product and technology strategy.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work across international and distributed teams.
• Strong written and spoken English.
• Based in Amsterdam or willing to relocate.

Preferred Experience

• Experience developing tools or infrastructure for modern software-development ecosystems.
• Familiarity with IDE architectures and technologies such as:
• IntelliJ Platform
• Program Structure Interface (PSI)
• Language Server Protocol (LSP)
• Experience with:
• Compiler toolchains
• Build systems
• Developer harnesses
• Testing and verification infrastructure
• Practical experience integrating large language models or coding agents into developer workflows.
• Knowledge of context engineering, agent orchestration, evaluation and verification techniques.
• Strong technical writing and technology-assessment skills.
• Experience working across geographically distributed engineering and research organisations.
• Established connections within the developer-tools, AI coding, research or startup ecosystem.