Lead Backend Engineer - Conversational Banking

Location:Berlin, Barcelona

You will be part of the Intelligent, which cross-functional teams power the operations at N26 and in some cases enable other tech teams through a robust platform approach.

We are seeking a talented Lead Engineer to join our expanding teams and evolve our product, powered by a microservice architecture predominantly written in Java and Kotlin, using Spring Boot.

Our cross-functional teams are passionate about collaboration and sharing knowledge, as well as working with a high degree of autonomy.

As a Lead Engineer at N26, you will be encouraged to embrace the latest technological updates and given a platform to work on complex, interesting problems on a daily basis.

In this role, you will:

• Directly impact your team’s tech scope: work hand in hand with PM and EM to manage product technical roadmaps and dependencies to minimise technical debt.

• Architect & Build: Design, develop, and maintain high-availability, high-performance web applications that serve as the backbone of our internal operations.

• Foster tech-solid delivery: Drive the team's build-it-ship-it attitude by demonstrating healthy engineering practices, writing clean, well-tested, and well-refactored code with the team, and shipping it into production as often as possible

• Integrate AI: Implement new features and integrations with foundational models and automation systems to empower our back-office teams.

• Scale: Optimize, measure and monitor distributed systems to ensure seamless, continuous software delivery.

• Mentor & Document: Role model engineering excellence through code reviews, technical documentation, and knowledge sharing in multiple ways, cultivating learning and avoiding knowledge silos in the team

• Lead initiatives to improve our company-wide engineering culture and discover ways to multiply the effectiveness of the team and the organisation

• Be involved in recruitment and employer brand projects to help make our engineering team stronger

What you need to be successful:

Engineering Mindset & Design

• Design Patterns: A firm grasp of object-oriented programming, distributed systems principles and methodologies like DDD using architecture design patterns like Hexagonal, Event-Driven and Microservices.

• Quality First: A strong track record of using engineering best practices, including Clean Code, TDD/BDD, and deep observability.

• AI-Augmented Development: Proven experience in critically using AI coding agents (e.g., Claude Code, Gemini Code, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate delivery without compromising code integrity or security.

Technical Stack

• Modern backend: 5+ years of experience in building complex distributed systems in Java or/and Kotlin and Springboot/Spring AI.

• API Design: Solid experience designing and implementing robust REST APIs.

• Data & DevOps: Professional experience with PostgreSQL (performance and scalability) and "DevOps mindset" regarding CI/CD pipelines. Experience with AWS and/or Kubernetes is a plus.

• Bonus Points: Knowledge of Python or Generative AI frameworks (Langchain, RAG pipelines) is a plus.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Bias for Action: A "can-do" attitude with a focus on product understanding to ensure continuous improvement and successful delivery.

• Effective leadership: Guide a team of mid and senior engineers to milestone delivery by unblocking and mentoring.

• Collaborative Spirit: Strong collaborative spirit with a commitment to knowledge sharing and mutual growth.

• Communication: Clear written and verbal communication skills, essential for a What you need to be successful.

• Strong ownership: A sense of independence and an ability to establish structures or processes to adapt to a constantly evolving domain and environment.

What's in it for you:

• Accelerate your career growth by joining one of Europe's most talked-about disruptors.

• Employee benefits including a competitive personal development budget, work-from-home budget, and discounts for fitness, wellness, language apps, and public transportation.

• A free Premium subscription on your personal N26 bank account, plus subscriptions for friends and family.

• Vacation: An additional day of annual leave for each year of service.

• Autonomy: A high degree of autonomy and access to cutting-edge technologies.

• Relocation: A relocation package with visa support for those who need it.