Backend Team Lead

Polarsteps is searching for a Backend Team Lead to guide and inspire our backend engineering team while ensuring a high-quality, scalable platform for our growing user base.

Responsibilities

• Lead the platform team of Senior Backend and DevOps Engineers, setting clear technical direction and expectations while staying close enough to the code to spot problems early and drive a top‑notch developer experience.
• Own the platform and backend roadmap in partnership with Product & Mobile, turning company‑level goals into scalable technical solutions and making pragmatic architecture decisions that balance long‑term platform investments with short‑term wins.
• Scale and evolve our infrastructure to handle continued growth with reliability, performance, and observability top of mind.
• Raise the technical bar through hands‑on code reviews, architectural guidance, and clear standards.
• Act as a true people manager for your team – owning career development, performance conversations, and creating an environment where engineers grow, feel supported, and do their best work.
• Be accountable for team health and performance: delivery, quality, incident response, knowledge sharing, and sustainable on‑call practices.
• Be AI‑pilled, but responsibly: stay up‑to‑date with AI tooling, experiment and evangelise within the team while understanding limitations and ensuring usage is properly de‑risked.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading and growing backend engineers, including performance management, coaching, and setting a clear technical direction.
• A track record of building and scaling systems handling thousands of requests per second, with deep learnings and reflections from those experiences.
• Strong proficiency in Python.
• Experience with cloud‑based architectures, relational databases, and event‑driven or messaging‑based systems.
• A track record of improving developer experience, such as building pipelines, deployment workflows, and the ability to clearly articulate the impact of those improvements.
• A high bar for code quality, testing, observability, and CI/CD, and the willingness to uphold it.
• Pragmatic problem‑solving approach, balancing quick solutions with structural changes when necessary.
• Excellent English communication skills, both written and spoken. Comfortable owning the technical direction, explaining trade‑offs and aligning stakeholders.

Benefits

• A yearly free flight or train ride to a random location.
• A shiny new MacBook to work your magic on.
• Hybrid working: work from home and the office, with a request to be in the office two days a week.
• An extensive home office set‑up, including noise‑canceling headphones and a standing desk.
• 30 days of vacation.
• Two paid Culture Days for days that are important to you but not recognized by the official Dutch calendar.
• The option to work from another country for up to eight weeks a year.
• A personal development budget.
• A pension plan to help you save for future travel.
• Delicious daily team lunches.
• Monthly parties and team trips away.
• A lively office in downtown Amsterdam, with travel costs reimbursed.
• Free Polarsteps Travel Books.

EEO Statement

At Polarsteps, we believe the best products are built by people as diverse as our users. We specifically encourage people underrepresented in the tech industry to apply for a role with us. The diversity of age, race, sexual orientation, physical ability, ethnicity, or gender identity makes the world and the workplace better.