Tech Lead

The role

Lead a small backend engineering team at a Series A messaging and AI software company. This role balances technical leadership and people development with designing and building production software.

What you will do

• Contribute to architecture, development, code reviews, and important technical projects
• Lead a team of up to four engineers and support its effectiveness, technical quality, and delivery
• Partner with product to understand customer problems, shape solutions, scope work, and set priorities
• Set technical direction while helping engineers build judgment and own decisions
• Hold regular one-to-ones, give actionable feedback, and support team members' development
• Remove blockers, manage dependencies, and identify delivery risks early
• Improve engineering practices and explore useful applications of AI across the development lifecycle
• Contribute to hiring through technical interviews and candidate discussions

Required qualifications

• At least three years of experience as a Senior or Staff Engineer
• Recent hands-on backend engineering work
• Substantial experience with Java, Kotlin, or another JVM language
• Experience designing and building production systems, making architecture decisions, and contributing to implementation and code reviews
• A backend engineering background
• Experience working in a startup environment with a strong delivery record
• Experience in a hybrid technical leadership role, leading projects, or beginning a transition into people leadership
• Clear communication skills
• Product judgment
• Fluency in English
• Experience with AI-assisted development

Nice to have

• Experience with Kotlin, Quarkus, and AWS

Benefits

• Equity is available through a virtual stock option plan

Before you apply

• Visa sponsorship is not available
• Candidates must already be authorized to work in Germany or relocate without requiring visa sponsorship

About the company

clera is a Series A messaging and AI software company.