Lead Software Engineer, Intelligent Operations

Finnair is a diverse community of professionals who work ambitiously with a big heart and commitment. A strong safety culture is our priority and at the core of our everyday work, never taking it for granted. We are committed to doing our share in solving the climate challenge by determinedly following our science-based pathway to decarbonize our operations. Our values – Always Safe, Customer at Heart, Stronger Together – guide us in everything we do. 

Our Digital Engineering team builds and runs Finnair's digital customer and employee experience. We're investing in how we build them: strengthening our product and software development practices and building toward more modern, AI-assisted engineering. Intelligent operations play a crucial role in supporting Finnair’s operational units and enable safety, efficiency and high-quality operations.  

We are now looking for a 

Lead Software Engineer, Intelligent Operations

to own the cross-cutting technical direction across our Intelligent Operations tribe — the technical and architectural questions that span our squads. The role sits within Finnair's Digital Engineering team and is based at Finnair HQ near Helsinki Airport.  

The Intelligent Operations tribe builds solutions for our employees — providing real-time situational awareness and tools that support day-to-day work and decision-making. These are business-critical systems where reliability and security directly affect our operations. A significant part of the tribe’s work is about building scalable, secure, and maintainable cloud-native integrations in AWS. 

As a Lead Software Engineer, you are the technical lead for the tribe. This is a senior individual-contributor role focused on technical leadership. The teams keep a high degree of autonomy over how they build, while you focus on the broader technical themes and keep the tribe's engineering practices strong and coherent. Part of what makes the role interesting is shaping how the tribe builds software going forward — including where AI-assisted development genuinely helps. 

In this role, you'll 

• Set the technical and architectural direction for the tribe’s backend services and integrations.

• Keep a pragmatic, ongoing dialogue about which technologies fit our needs. 

• Share reusable solutions and good practices beyond your own teams and contribute to technical discussions across the wider engineering organization. 

• Explore how AI can change the way the tribe designs, builds and operates software, and guide its adoption across the teams. 

• Stay close to the work: review technical designs, contribute to complex technical decisions, and get into the code when it matters. 

To succeed and enjoy this role, we hope you bring 

• 7+ years in software development, including several years as a technical lead for a team — with a track record of building and running complex, cloud-native systems in AWS. 

• Solution architecture and systems/integration design skills, with strong analytical thinking and planning. 

• A good grasp of automated testing and building solutions that are testable by design. 

• Experience with secure software development and architecture. 

• Comfort leading without formal authority: you bring people along through clarity and credibility, and you're happy to challenge an approach when something doesn't add up. 

• A product mindset — you care how technical decisions affect the business, not just code quality. 

• Strong collaboration and proactivity: you spot problems and opportunities early and move them forward. 

• Genuine interest in modern, AI-assisted development. 

• Strong written and spoken English

• A Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field (or equivalent experience). 

Nice to have 

• Strong observability practices in production (structured logging, metrics, error tracking, performance monitoring — e.g. Datadog). 

• Experience coaching or leading engineering teams. 

• Experience in an airline or another regulated, high-security domain. 

Working at Finnair 

We offer the chance to work in the fast-changing aviation industry, in a culture that supports professional development and continuous improvement, with modern leadership practices and internally highly rated supervisory work. You'll also enjoy a leisure travel benefit to help you and your family explore the world, along with wellbeing support through our Sickness Fund insurance, Epassi benefits, campus gyms and hobby clubs. 

We work in a hybrid model with regular on-site presence at our HQ near Helsinki Airport. 

Recruitment process 

Our recruitment process is designed to give you the opportunity to get to know both the role and the people you'll be working with, while allowing us to understand your technical expertise, way of thinking and how you collaborate across teams. 

The process includes: 

• Recruiter intro – an introductory discussion about your background, the role and what you're looking for. 

• Hiring Manager interview – a deeper conversation about the team, the role, your experience and how you approach technical leadership. 

• Lightweight pre-assignment & technical discussion – a practical assignment followed by a discussion focused on your technical thinking, architectural decisions and problem-solving approach. 

• Final interview – a final conversation to answer any remaining questions, get to know each other better, and make sure the role is the right fit for both you and Finnair. 

Interested? 

Please submit your application with your CV, cover letter, and salary expectation no later than Sunday, 6 September 2026. We review applications on a rolling basis and will begin interviewing candidates as applications are received, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible. 

If you have any questions about the role, please contact Kristina Pääkkönen, Head of Engineering, Operations and Enterprise, by email at [email protected]. 

Please note that we do not process applications submitted via email. 

The recruitment process includes a pre-employment security clearance and a drug test. 

Our people are key to our success and the foundation that makes Finnair unique. We are committed to creating a safe work environment where all our people can thrive and succeed. We cherish diversity and strive to employ people with different backgrounds and experiences, bringing together multiple views to foster our business success. According to our employee survey, respecting diversity is at a high level in our work community.