Senior Backend Engineer
Join a fast-growing, listed company with a purpose! Fastned owns and operates a network of 400+ fast charging stations across 10 European countries, allowing electric vehicle drivers to charge their car with 100% green energy in just 15 minutes. Our goal is a European network of 1000 fast charging stations in prime locations, where all electric vehicles can charge with renewable energy from the sun and wind. We have recently been voted best charging network in the UK, France and the Netherlands. If you want to make a difference and work in an informal, international scale-up environment with future prospects, then read on!
Your role
Fastned is a pioneer in a completely new industry, aiming to accelerate the transition towards sustainable mobility by giving freedom to electric drivers. As a Senior Backend Engineer in our Charging team you'll be at the core of the team we're building. The Charging team owns all digital communication with our chargers via the industry-standard OCPP protocol, covering the full session lifecycle and driver-facing experiences such as Autocharge and Plug & Charge. With 23,000+ charging sessions a day and billions of messages a year flowing through our systems, the services you build are business-critical - our team and EV drivers rely on them every day.
With your in-depth knowledge of Kotlin, Spring Boot (microservices), AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, SQL, GitLab CI/CD and REST APIs, you create the scalable, high-availability services that ensure our customers can charge at any time. We're now evolving the charging stack to integrate with the MSP (Mobility Service Provider) proposition Fastned is building in-house - so there's a lot to build. As a senior engineer you'll set the technical bar and act as a key sparring partner for your team of fellow Backend Engineers, an Engineering Manager and a Product Manager.
Your overall responsibilities include
Designing, developing, testing and reviewing reusable, maintainable and scalable code for Fastned's charging platform and infrastructure;
Delivering core charging milestones: the migration from OCPP 1.6 to OCPP 2.x, Autocharge and Plug & Charge, and our shift to advanced maintenance using granular data and ML/AI modelling;
Working AI-first: using AI-augmented engineering (Claude Code, agentic workflows and AI tooling) as a natural part of how you design, build, test and review - with judgment for where AI is a multiplier and where humans stay in the loop;
Overseeing technical development from ideation to deployment, and taking operational responsibility for what you build (monitoring, alerting, incident analysis);
Helping improve engineering methodologies and best practices, and mentoring others as a tech lead in the Charging team.
Requirements
Who we are looking for
In order to be successful in this role you bring along a highly entrepreneurial mindset - we want our employees to 'Think like a founder'. You thrive on taking ownership of the engineering that creates a best-in-class user experience.
Additionally, you tick the following boxes:
You have 7+ years of professional backend experience, with strong hands-on Kotlin and/or Java and experience operating microservices in production.
You've worked with AWS or other cloud platforms, containerization/orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes) and relational databases (e.g. Postgres).
You're experienced building microservices with RESTful web services, and comfortable with event-driven architectures and tools like Kafka.
AI-first instincts: you reach for AI tooling as a natural part of your workflow, with good judgment about its strengths, limits and risks.
You demonstrate great communication and coaching skills and love working in a team; tech-lead experience is a strong plus.
Proficiency in English is mandatory.
You have a strong affinity with the energy transition and Fastned's mission.
Nice to have: hands-on OCPP (1.6 and/or 2.x); e-mobility, MSP/CPO models or standards such as OCPI; high-throughput, real-time event-driven systems; mobile app backends (e.g. React Native); or building with LLMs/agents in production.
Join us in building a better future
We work hard to change the world, but we don't forget to recognise & celebrate our successes, big and small. We focus on work-life balance, provide genuine work flexibility, and have family-friendly policies in place.
Electric mobility is new territory for you? Don’t worry!
As part of your onboarding, you will participate in a series of exciting workshops where you will learn everything about our industry and fast-charging infrastructure.
Our benefits package includes:
Stock option plan - we believe in shared value creation.
Pension plan (fully covered by Fastned).
A training and development budget of €3,000 per year per employee, because development and training are important to us and our sector offers endless opportunities.
In order to experience and enjoy the EV life, you get access to our fully electric vehicle fleet (all charging expenses covered), which is also for private use.
29 holidays. Additionally, we give you two mission days you can use to contribute to Fastned’s mission or to support a cause that is important to you.
Going the extra mile for parents: We provide you with personalised coaching support before, during, and after parental leave, facilitated by Foundree.
Understanding women's health is beneficial for all of us, fostering empathy, improving communication, and creating a more inclusive workplace. That's why we teamed up with Flouria, providing you with quick access to a broad range of women's health professionals.
Daily lunches, snacks & drinks are provided at our office locations.
Next to fun events year-round, we throw notorious Christmas parties and organise an amazing yearly trip abroad with all employees.
Other perks include flexible working hours, full travel compensation and the working gear of your choice.
Interested in making an impact?
We would love to have a conversation with you!
Apply now, send us your CV and explain in your motivation letter why you’re excited about joining Fastned.
Here’s the next steps of the hiring process:
Screening call with Recruiter
Codility assignment and technical interview with our Senior Engineers
Culture-fit conversation with the team
Closing Coffee Chat with our Head of Engineering / Director of Product & Engineering
Then, it’s time to welcome you on board to Fastned!
Fastned stands for equity and inclusion. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, gender identities, sexual orientations, religions, neurodiversity, disabilities, parental status or any other protected characteristic that makes you unique.
If you have questions or need further information regarding your application, please contact our recruitment team via recruitment(at) fastned.nl