Lead Backend Engineer - Conversational Banking

You will be part of the Intelligent teams that power the operations at N26. 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.

What you'll do

• 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.

What you'll need

• A firm grasp of object-oriented programming, distributed systems principles and design patterns like Hexagonal, Event-Driven and Microservices.
• A strong track record of using engineering best practices, including Clean Code, TDD/BDD, and deep observability.
• 5+ years of experience in building complex distributed systems in Java and/or Kotlin and Springboot/Spring AI.
• Solid experience designing and implementing robust REST APIs.
• Professional experience with PostgreSQL (performance and scalability) and CI/CD pipelines.
• 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.
• Effective leadership: Guide a team of mid and senior engineers to milestone delivery by unblocking and mentoring.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills and a strong sense of ownership.

Nice to have

• Experience with AWS and/or Kubernetes.
• Knowledge of Python or Generative AI frameworks (Langchain, RAG pipelines).

What they offer

• Competitive personal development budget and work-from-home budget.
• Free Premium N26 bank account subscription plus subscriptions for friends and family.
• An additional day of annual leave for each year of service.
• Access to cutting-edge technologies and a high degree of autonomy.
• Relocation package with visa support.
• Discounts for fitness, wellness, language apps, and public transportation.