Engineering Team Lead (Backend)

Who we are

At Vandebron, we're transforming the energy landscape, steering away from the conventional to champion sustainability. Born in 2014, our journey began with Chapter 1, disrupting the market with a transparent platform connecting consumers directly to local, green energy producers.

Now, in Chapter 2, we are dedicated to ensuring 100% green energy availability, 100% of the time. Think smart solutions: flexible use of wind and solar farms and efficient energy storage.

No waiting around, we actively shape a sustainable future. Good energy, smart solutions: that's Vandebron.

Your impact

You will lead a cross-functional product team of 3–4 engineers within the Producer domain—a core, business-critical area at Vandebron packed with domain depth and complex technical challenges.

At Vandebron, the Engineering Team Lead role offers the best of both worlds: you step into genuine leadership without giving up hands-on engineering. Our Team Lead track is meant to enable you to take true ownership of both your team’s delivery and your engineers' personal growth, while remaining an active technical contributor and architect.

You will help define what modern engineering leadership looks like in a truly dynamic environment. You won't be doing it alone, either: you will have a strong support structure around you, collaborating closely with your Engineering Manager for your own growth, Staff Engineers for architectural direction, and a dedicated Delivery Manager to keep priorities sharp.

What you'll do

• Actively contribute to our backend codebase and steer technical architecture, pragmatically deciding when writing code or enabling and unblocking others delivers the highest impact.

• Partner early with Product to understand the why before jumping into the what. Bring technical feasibility, constraints, and assumptions to the table early to shape solutions collaboratively rather than just receiving tickets.

• Own your team’s delivery rhythm and predictability. Set realistic timelines, surface risks early, and use delivery signals (such as DORA metrics) to steer the focus toward tangible outcomes rather than just shipping features.

• Enable your team’s growth through collaborative refinements, realistic estimations, and cross-team dependencies to ensure product goals translate smoothly into robust technical execution.

• Collaborate with Staff Engineers to uphold the technical direction, quality standards and align the team with our technical objectives.

• Provide regular, actionable feedback, lead continuous performance and review cycles, and craft personalised development paths in close collaboration with the Engineering Manager and People & Culture.

This is how you'll make a difference

• You bring solid hands-on experience in backend development and technical design, with fluency in a functional backend language (such as Kotlin or Java; Scala experience is a welcome plus). You’re excited to stay in the code while guiding architectural decisions and mentoring others.

• You build consensus around sound technical choices, guide discussions with empathy, and know how to balance short-term delivery with long-term code health without imposing top-down mandates.

• You have experience working side-by-side with Product Owners in cross-functional setups, actively engaging in problem discovery, translating business context into technical solutions, and communicating trade-offs clearly to non-technical stakeholders.

• You believe in CI/CD, comprehensive automated testing, trunk-based development, and shipping in small, incremental batches. You have an appetite for using delivery and product signals (like DORA metrics) to make team progress visible and predictable.

• You take genuine joy in coaching engineers, holding constructive feedback conversations, and fostering an inclusive, high-trust team environment where everyone feels safe to voice ideas, challenge assumptions, and grow.

• You are proactive about engineering evolution—whether that means exploring how AI-assisted development tools can empower your team or helping navigate a stack transition.

What’s in it for you

• An annual bonus based on company performance

• 30 days of paid leave per year

• Additional paid time off, for life events (moving, wedding celebrations, enhanced parental leave), Liberation Day off every year and on top of that 2 extra days off per year: one for volunteering, one for choosing sustainable travel

• Work abroad for up to 6 weeks per year (max. 4 consecutive, including up to 4 weeks outside the EU)

• A possibility to have a sabbatical after 3 years

• €1,200 annual learning budget + unlimited access to L&D programs

• Strong focus on your well-being, with unlimited access to the mental health platform OpenUp

• A solid pension scheme

• Income protection through long-term illness insurance

• €50 net allowance per month for phone & WiFi

• A one-time €200 home office setup budget

• Discount on your Vandebron invoice

• A flexible hybrid setup between home and our carbon-neutral Amsterdam office

• Daily free, healthy, vegetarian lunches cooked in-house

• An NS Business Card if you live more than 10km from the office

Interested?

If this role excites you, apply via this page.

Not convinced yet or still have questions? Feel free to reach out via jordreukers@vandebron.nl.

At Vandebron, we believe in diversity, inclusiveness, and equal career opportunities. Be your authentic self - and it’s totally okay with us if you don’t mention your gender or date of birth on your resume. We also care about your privacy and handle your data carefully. Under the GDPR, you are not required to provide us with any information about your health, race/nationality, or religion, and you may also omit your social security number (BSN) and passport photo from your job application documentation.