Engineering Manager (m/f/d) – Core Team

We build the software that runs tenant electricity projects: meter data in, billing out, and everything in between. The Core Team is responsible for the operator portal, the product that our customers' ongoing operations rely on. It is our most technically in-depth team, and it is growing.

The operator portal is not a generic SaaS. It reflects the energy industry: metering point operation, market communication, grid fees, surcharges, billing according to rules that the legislator writes and regularly changes. Those who prioritize here must understand what a requirement for the operator means economically and what happens if it is implemented incorrectly.

For this, we are looking for a person who leads the team and understands the business behind it. Not as a pass-through for tickets and not as an architect who decides everything themselves, but as someone who translates business requirements into technical decisions and ensures that good developers can do good work: clear goals, little friction, honest feedback, reliable delivery.

The path to this is consciously chosen: You will start as a developer in the Core Team for about six months. You will build features, do reviews, and get to know the codebase, the domain, and the people from the inside. Afterward, you will take over leadership of the team. Anyone who wants to lead a team they have never seen from the inside will lead it past what matters.

Technically: Python with Django and Django Ninja in the backend, React with TypeScript in the frontend, PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB, deployed on Kubernetes via GitOps with ArgoCD. AI coding assistants are an integral part of the workflow. In the first few months, you will write this code yourself. Afterward, you must be able to read it and understand what your team is discussing.

In the first six months

• You work as a developer in the Core Team: features end-to-end, reviews, deployments, support cases. Without a special role

• You learn the domain from metering concepts to billing and the history of the codebase, including the parts that hurt

• You build trust with the people in the team because you work with them, not above them

Afterward

• You lead the Core Team: hiring, onboarding, 1:1s, development, feedback. The people in the team are your first responsibility

• You are responsible for delivery: Together with Product, you prioritize according to economic value and regulatory pressure, plan realistically, and ensure that what has been promised is completed

• You contribute domain expertise to product decisions: You recognize when a requirement comes from the market, when from a single customer, and when from a misunderstanding

• You maintain technical quality without being the bottleneck yourself: You moderate architecture decisions, request tests and reviews, and create space for refactoring

• You are the interface to Product, Support, and the other Engineering Teams, and you resolve conflicts before they land in the sprint

• You make problems visible: If something doesn't work, you say it early and with a suggestion, not late and with an excuse

• You shape processes so that they serve the team, and eliminate those that do not

• Several years of experience as a software developer with web applications in production. You can be productive in Django and React or get up to speed in a few weeks

• Experience in leading a development team, as an Engineering Manager, Team Lead, or in a comparable role with personnel responsibility

• You can evaluate a data model and moderate an architecture discussion without taking it over

• You want to write code again or continue to write code before you lead, and see this as an advantage, not a detour

• Experience in the energy industry, ideally in metering point operation, billing, market communication, or tenant electricity. You don't just know terms like metering concept, MaLo, or OBIS from Wikipedia

• Business understanding: You think from the operator's business model, not from the feature. You can explain which requirement secures revenue, which reduces risk, and which is just nice to have

• You give direct feedback and can handle receiving direct feedback

• You can say no, to stakeholders and to your own team, and explain why

• You feel comfortable in a startup where structures are still being created and you help shape them

• German at least at C1 level, because the domain expertise, customers, and a large part of the communication are in German

• A leadership role with real creative freedom in a growing engineering organization, with an onboarding that doesn't throw you in at the deep end

• Direct line to the CTO and a say in team structure, not just in implementation

• Hybrid in Hamburg: 1-2 days in the office, the rest remote

• A team without hierarchy levels. Whoever has a better idea implements it

• Subsidy for Deutschlandticket, bike leasing, Urban Sports Club, and company pension plan

• A product that concretely advances the energy transition, instead of just writing it into a presentation