Engineering Lead - Backend

As an Engineering Lead, you will serve as a crucial technical and delivery-oriented leader embedded within our software engineering teams. Positioned between the Engineering Manager and Senior Software Engineer roles, your responsibility is to bridge execution with alignment — ensuring smooth coordination across domains, high-quality engineering delivery, and effective collaboration with stakeholders.  While not expected to be fully hands-on, you remain deeply technical, capable of guiding design and architecture decisions, and advocating for sound engineering practices. You are instrumental in aligning the team’s technical execution with product objectives while fostering team collaboration.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

Technical Execution & Leadership
• Lead the planning, coordination, and execution of software delivery with a strong focus on reliability, scalability, and maintainability .
• Facilitate architecture and design discussions and ensure alignment with other domains and company-wide technical strategies.
• Review key code contributions and provide technical guidance to maintain high engineering standards.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives in system design, observability, and development processes.

Delivery & Agile Facilitation
• Act as the delivery coordinator for your squad, ensuring timely and quality-focused software releases.
• Facilitate Agile ceremonies and champion best practices tailored to the team’s needs .
• Own the work scope and execution tracking, working closely with product managers to maintain alignment on priorities Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for product managers and stakeholders to align on feature feasibility, scope, and technical trade-offs .
• Coordinate with other engineering teams to ensure architectural consistency and reliable integrations. Proactively engage into cross team collaboration and facilitation. 
• Represent the team in technical planning and roadmap discussions throughout the engineering organization

People Leadership & Growth
• Mentor and support the professional development of team members, helping them grow in their
careers and take on new challenges.
• Foster a culture of trust, collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Help identify development opportunities for team members and support their career growth.
• Encourage team ownership and accountability while maintaining a supportive environment.
• Promote high engineering standards and team excellence through regular feedback and coaching.
• Actively foster a culture of psychological safety, continuous learning, and operational excellence.

Requirements

Must-Have
• Proven experience in backend engineering (we use Golang and PostgreSQL), including API design and delivery in production environments
• Solid understanding of both on-prem and cloud-native devops practices
• Experience with containerisation (i.e. Kubernetes, Docker) and Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform)
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work across multiple disciplines and with external stakeholders.
• Familiarity with observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Datadog) and system performance monitoring.
• Demonstrated product mindset: genuine interest in understanding the customer, the business goals, and the real-world problems being solved and lead the way to find the best way to design product that solve those business problems. 

Nice-to-Have
• Prior experience as a Staff Engineer or Tech Lead with exposure to technical leadership without formal management.
• Experience in leading agile software teams and continuous product delivery.
• Exposure to event-driven architectures and distributed systems.
• Experience in operating production systems, including support, alerting, and incident response.
• Interest in space, earth observation, or working with geospatial data.

What Success Looks Like
• Software delivery is predictable, aligned with business priorities, and technically sound.
• The delivered software is tested and reliable
• The team operates smoothly with high morale and minimal blockers.
• Stakeholders are consistently well-informed and confident in the delivery pipeline.
• Engineering standards are upheld through your influence and leadership without direct managerial authority.