The Role
Lead a cross-functional, AI-native backend team owning onboarding, discovery, learning management and an AI assistant. Stay hands-on coding, design scalable architecture, reduce technical debt, set engineering standards, co-lead product/technical OKRs, and line-manage and grow the team while partnering closely with Product and Design.
Summary Generated by Built In
At simpleclub, one mission unites us all: to create a change in education. Hundreds of thousands of trainees, trainers and students use our platform every month, and we're making their vocational training experience radically better in over 40 occupations.
Team Red owns the learning management system that powers that experience and integrates it into our users' day-to-day: onboarding & discovery, learning management tools and the AI assistant that's transforming trainers' day-to-day work. As the Lead Engineer for Team Red, you'll build both the product and grow the team. We're not looking for someone to just manage delivery, we want a product engineer at heart: someone who cares about customer value as much as technical excellence. Working closely with our VP of Engineering and our product and technical leadership, you'll own the performance, experience and scalability of this part of the product, shape what we build and why, lead the design of a scalable target architecture, and drive down technical debt, always with the customer outcome in mind.
How will you make an impact:
- Lead an ai-native, cross-functional team building simpleclub's products and platform: onboarding & discovery, learning management tools and the AI assistant transforming trainers' day-to-day work. You'll stay hands-on: writing and maintaining code, and contributing actively to the innovation and solutioning.
- Line-manage and grow your team through feedback, clear growth paths, and mentorship.
- Set standards with other leads and engineers across architecture, development, delivery and operations, for high velocity and a scalable, reliable system.
- Identify, scope, prioritize and resolve technical debt with your team and your Product Manager.
- Co-lead the product and technical OKRs for your team, driving measurable impact for customers.
- Partner with Product Managers and designers through research and validation, as a true product trio.
What we value:
- 1-2+ years leading engineering teams, on top of several years as an IC Product Engineer.
- A track record of designing technical solutions for complex, large-scale problems in senior roles.
- A history of innovating and shipping customer-valued solutions, going beyond just developing tickets.
- You use AI coding tools daily and can lead a team through the shift. You understand how AI already changes engineering roles and delivery, you're continuously learning, and you're ready to set the standard for agentic tooling (Claude Code, Codex, or similar) on your team.
- Strong computer science and software fundamentals: architecture and database design, data structures, and algorithms.
- Experience in building and scaling systems in multi-team setups, highly scalable, fast to develop, reliable and secure.
- High sense of ownership and accountability for the domains your team owns and its mission.
- Strong with modern system architectures: cloud-based, serverless, messaging systems, NoSQL and SQL databases.
- Strong with our backend stack: Node.js, TypeScript, GCP, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub.
- Excellent, async-first communication. You foster teamwork and knowledge sharing beyond engineering, and lead through change and ambiguity while inspiring others.
Not a Must, but Nice to have:
- Infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), large-scale distributed systems, and GCP at scale.
- Solid grounding in and appreciation of DevOps.
- Good knowledge of frontend engineering and a drive for cross-functional development.
- Experience leading multiple simultaneous product development efforts and initiatives.
- Experience in product trios or similar setups where engineers shape the product, not just build what's specced.
Our Tech Stack:
Node.js, TypeScript, Flutter, GCP (Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub), Terraform, agentic dev tools (Claude Code, Codex)
What is in for you:
- Unlimited paid holidays
- Work from anywhere
- Team events
- A great culture
- Perk Budget
- Join a purposeful mission
💰Your salary: We 💙 transparency. We have different levels within our salary bands, and we use these levels to determine a fair salary for each range. Your salary is reviewed at least once a year.
The salary band for this role in Germany is: 82.700 - 111.900 EUR annually gross. If you live outside of Germany, we will adapt to your local market.
We have implemented salary bands in all job descriptions to ensure we treat all employees fairly. Once we get to know each other better and understand your skills and experience during the interview process, we will be able to evaluate where you would fit within the salary band.
🌍simpleclub welcomes everyone. Yes, everyone:
At simpleclub we are devoted to building an environment that promotes equality, inclusion, and diversity. We are on the path towards expansion and with that, we believe everyone’s uniqueness should be celebrated and embraced. This is critical to our success and innovation. We want to build a product that is loved by everyone and we want the same to be reflected in our teams.
It is key to us that our employees bring themselves to work no matter what age, ethnicity, religion, citizenship, sexual orientation, disability status, neurodiversity, color of your skin, beliefs, gender, or else.
With this in mind, we are working to ensure simpleclub remains a diverse and inclusive environment for everyone.
About
simpleclub was originally founded by Nicolai Schork and Alexander Giesecke as a B2C learning platform for students and soon became the most popular brand in the industry with 2m+ monthly users and 4m+ social media followers.In 2021, simpleclub was ranked the #1 employer in the industry by Statista and Business Punk magazine.In 2023 simpleclub expanded into B2B SaaS, led by Alexander Powell as a co-founder, which soon became the main focus of the company.Today, simpleclub is an AI-powered B2B learning platform for up- & reskilling with a team of around 100 employees trusted by companies like Audi, Bosch, Amazon and Vodafone alongside 500+ other companies.The platform combines an interactive learning experience for users with learning management for trainers, powered by AI.
Skills Required
- 1-2+ years leading engineering teams, plus several years as an individual contributor Product Engineer
- Track record designing technical solutions for complex, large-scale problems
- History of innovating and shipping customer-valued solutions
- Daily use of AI coding tools and ability to lead team adoption (e.g., Claude Code, Codex)
- Strong computer science and software fundamentals: architecture, database design, data structures, algorithms
- Experience building and scaling systems in multi-team setups; highly scalable, reliable, secure systems
- High sense of ownership and accountability for team domains and mission
- Strong with modern system architectures: cloud-based, serverless, messaging systems
- Experience with NoSQL and SQL databases
- Strong with backend stack: Node.js, TypeScript, GCP, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub
- Excellent async-first communication and cross-functional collaboration
- Experience with Terraform, large-scale distributed systems, and GCP at scale
- Solid grounding in and appreciation of DevOps practices
- Good knowledge of frontend engineering and drive for cross-functional development
- Experience leading multiple simultaneous product development efforts and product trio setups
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The Company
What We Do
simpleclub is a digital learning platform that provides personalized learning experiences through videos, exercises, and AI-powered tutoring for school and vocational students. It is recognized as Germany's most popular learning app for schools and training.
