Lead Backend Engineer - Conversational Banking

About this role

<h2><strong>About the opportunity</strong></h2> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>Our cross-functional teams are passionate about collaboration and sharing knowledge, as well as working with a high degree of autonomy.</p> <p>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.</p> <h2><strong>In this role, you will:</strong></h2> <ul> <li>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.</li> <li>Architect &amp; Build: Design, develop, and maintain high-availability, high-performance web applications that serve as the backbone of our internal operations.</li> <li>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</li> <li>Integrate AI: Implement new features and integrations with foundational models and automation systems to empower our back-office teams.</li> <li>Scale: Optimize, measure and monitor distributed systems to ensure seamless, continuous software delivery.</li> <li>Mentor &amp; 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</li> <li>Lead initiatives to improve our company-wide engineering culture and discover ways to multiply the effectiveness of the team and the organisation</li> <li>Be involved in recruitment and employer brand projects to help make our engineering team stronger</li> </ul> <h2><strong>What you need to be successful:</strong></h2> <p><strong>Engineering Mindset &amp; Design</strong></p> <ul> <li>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.</li> <li>Quality First: A strong track record of using engineering best practices, including Clean Code, TDD/BDD, and deep observability.</li> <li>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.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Technical Stack</strong></p> <ul> <li>Modern backend: 5+ years of experience in building complex distributed systems in Java or/and Kotlin and Springboot/Spring AI.</li> <li>API Design: Solid experience designing and implementing robust REST APIs.</li> <li>Data &amp; DevOps: Professional experience with PostgreSQL (performance and scalability) and "DevOps mindset" regarding CI/CD pipelines. Experience with AWS and/or Kubernetes is a plus.</li> <li>Bonus Points: Knowledge of Python or Generative AI frameworks (Langchain, RAG pipelines) is a plus.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Leadership &amp; Soft Skills</strong></p> <ul> <li>Bias for Action: A "can-do" attitude with a focus on product understanding to ensure continuous improvement and successful delivery.</li> <li>Effective leadership: Guide a team of mid and senior engineers to milestone delivery by unblocking and mentoring.</li> <li>Collaborative Spirit: Strong collaborative spirit with a commitment to knowledge sharing and mutual growth.</li> <li>Communication: Clear written and verbal communication skills, essential for a What you need to be successful.</li> <li>Strong ownership: A sense of independence and an ability to establish structures or processes to adapt to a constantly evolving domain and environment.</li> </ul> <h2><strong>What's in it for you:</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Accelerate your career growth by joining one of Europe's most talked-about disruptors.</li> <li>Employee benefits including a competitive personal development budget, work-from-home budget, and discounts for fitness, wellness, language apps, and public transportation.</li> <li>A free Premium subscription on your personal N26 bank account, plus subscriptions for friends and family.</li> <li>Vacation: An additional day of annual leave for each year of service.</li> <li>Autonomy: A high degree of autonomy and access to cutting-edge technologies.</li> <li>Relocation: A relocation package with visa support for those who need it.</li> </ul> <h2><strong>Who we are</strong></h2> <p>N26 has reimagined banking for today's digital world. Technology and design empower everything we do and it's how we are building the global banking platform the world loves to use. We've eliminated physical branches, paperwork, and hidden fees for an elegant digital experience and supreme savings.</p> <p>We are headquartered in Berlin with offices in multiple cities across Europe, including Vienna and Barcelona, and a 1,500-strong team of more than 80 nationalities.</p> <p><strong>Sounds good? Apply now for this position.</strong></p> <h3><strong>Equal Opportunities</strong></h3> <p>We recognize that our strength lies in our people and the varied perspectives they bring to our workforce. We strive to build talented and diverse teams to drive our business success and empower our people to reach their full potential. We genuinely welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, cultures, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, neurodiversities, and ages.</p> <p>If there's anything you need to make the application process work for you, please let us know by reaching out to <strong>candidate.exp@n26.com.</st