Engineering Manager - Java

Responsibilities:

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of 6-12 Java backend engineers through regular 1:1s, performance reviews, career development plans, and continuous feedback.
• Own end-to-end delivery of backend services from technical scoping and sprint planning through production deployment and post-release monitoring.
• Drive architectural decisions for Java-based microservices, APIs, and data platforms aligned with enterprise scalability, reliability, and security standards.
• Collaborate with Product Managers, UX, DevOps, and enterprise architects to define roadmaps, shape requirements, and deliver high-quality features on time.
• Champion engineering best practices, including code review, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, observability, and incident management.
• Define and track engineering health metrics, velocity, quality, reliability (SLOs/SLAs), and continuously improve team productivity and code quality.
• Recruit, onboard, and retain top backend engineering talent; build an inclusive and psychologically safe team culture.
• Act as an escalation point for technical incidents and ensure root cause analysis and learnings are embedded back into engineering processes.
• Represent the engineering team in cross-functional leadership forums and contribute to department-wide technical strategy.

Requirements:

• 11+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in an engineering management or tech lead role managing a team of engineers.
• Deep hands-on experience with Java (Java 11+), Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and RESTful / gRPC API design.
• Proven track record delivering backend systems at scale microservices architecture, event-driven systems, distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native principles and experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP (Deutsche Telekom Open Telekom Cloud experience is a plus).
• Proficiency with containerization and orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm.
• Experience with CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, GitLab CI, ArgoCD) and DevOps culture.
• Fluency with relational and non-relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka).
• Excellent communication skills in English (German is a plus); able to articulate technical concepts to both engineers and senior business stakeholders.
• Experience working in agile environments (Scrum/Kanban); familiarity with SAFe at scale is a plus.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to Have:

• Experience in the telecommunications industry, particularly with BSS/OSS systems, billing platforms, or network APIs.
• Familiarity with reactive programming frameworks (Project Reactor, RxJava).
• Knowledge of identity and access management (OAuth2 OpenID Connect, Keycloak).
• Exposure to data engineering or analytics pipelines (Apache Flink, Spark).
• German language skills (B2 or higher).
• Active contributions to open-source Java projects or community involvement.

Skills

Docker, Helm, Java, Kubernetes, distributed systems, microservices