Engineering Manager (f/m/x)

About lemon.markets 🍋

Our mission is providing better opportunities to invest in capital markets. By empowering FinTechs and Banks to offer investment products, we help create financial well-being for their customers. In pursuit of this goal we strive to open 100 million securities accounts within Europe in this decade.

lemon.markets builds infrastructure for financial services and technology companies powering the next generation of investment products. From enabling a FinTech to launch their first investment product, over allowing e.g. a Neobank to embed investing into their product to bringing investing into a completely new context. Our API-first infrastructure makes launching an investment product customer-centric and compliant. We abstract all complexity for our partners through a well documented API, a self-service customer operations portal and operating in a clear regulatory framework. Enabling partners to launch in weeks, not months.

We have experienced first hand that brokerage infrastructure is broken. Building an investment product used to be highly expensive, challenging and cumbersome. We ease this pain by shielding our partners & their customers from the underlying complexity - and with that we make investing more accessible to everyone. Because that’s exactly what we enjoy, going to places nobody else dares and solving hard problems. This not only creates tons of value when done right, but attracts the smartest minds - because outlier companies are built by exceptional (& diverse) people like you.

Your Mission:

You join us after our initial launch, as the first Engineering Manager reporting to our VP Engineering. As our organization matures and shifts towards operating the platform, you will have the opportunity significantly shape how we do engineering and build products at lemon.markets.

As Engineering Manager your mission is to develop, grow and lead engineers across two of our squads here at lemon.markets that deliver & design backend services and architecture of our brokerage platform & API. We expect you to inspire & guide the engineers to grow individually and within the organization, being ready to drive change and experiment in search of the best solution.

Your squads will focus on areas of the Customer Lifecycle, Order Lifecycle OR Post-Trade processes - making sure our Core Platform & Systems around it are reliable & scalable. They will have ownership over features and services end to end, ensuring they run smoothly on production.

This is your opportunity to work closely with Leadership and collaborating with experienced professionals from Product, Brokerage and Operations, together we will leverage your previous experiences to build the investment infrastructure for the next 100 million retail investors in Europe.

Your responsibilities split as follows:

50% Delivery: Collaborate closely with the product function, lead the development, set priorities, drive & facilitate technical decisions

40% People: Build a high performing & diverse team, develop our engineers further and foster the right culture that attracts other great talent.

10% Being hands-on: Be hands-on, help design & develop our technical architecture & infrastructure and stay up to date on the code base that your team maintains.

You will:

• Lead the technical development for your squads: set priorities, define engineering processes & rituals that enable your squad to operate effectively & help them confidently navigate uncertainties and unknowns within your domain.
• Define the quarterly goals for your squads based on the company roadmap, and create accountability around them, in close alignment with our product and brokerage operations functions.
• Own the quality and security of the software within your domain, and drive the necessary initiatives to constantly improve it.
• Have a hands-on approach and work together with the engineers in your squads as well as product managers and brokerage operations experts to solve complex problems in your domain, resulting in a robust platform.
• Help us grow our engineering team by attracting, evaluating and recruiting top-notch talent.
• Develop our engineering talent and help them grow by providing and facilitating feedback and coaching them on relevant skills.
• Build a strong culture within your squad, fostering trust and promoting productive conflict and a culture of knowledge sharing.
• Contribute to automation and optimization efforts for our operational teams, increasing the operational efficiency of the business.
• Work closely with the leadership team to actively foster clarity on deliverables, timelines, budget and overall direction.

You will be successful if:

• You have gained profound technical leadership experience as Engineering Manager or Head of Engineering. This means, you led & grew one or multiple teams in an agile and fast-paced environment and achieved ambitious goals.
• Brokerage, payment, or financial services excite you. Ideally, you had prior touch points to Fintech professionally.
• You are an empathic leader that can inspire others. You know how to encourage strong (cross-functional) collaboration, develop your team members and foster a strong sense of collaboration across the whole team.
• You have good experience in building API-first architectures. Meaning, you understand how to build highly scalable architecture and reliable REST APIs that have hundreds of thousands of users, yet are able to start small and deliver value to our customers early and frequently.
• You can lead by example and know what great code looks like. You have the ability to write well-structured and tested code in modern high-level programming languages and are familiar with cloud-based software architecture.
• You have a deep understanding of software development processes and their failure modes, and know how to set a team up for success.
• You enjoy building and scaling complex systems. You’d be joining shortly after our launch, so operating a complex system while making small and large improvements on a continuous basis and seeing the direct impact you have is what gets you going.
• You are a skilled communicator and accelerator for growth & innovation. You foster healthy conflict, lead by example, and are comfortable championing and standing strong where needed.
• You have an intrinsic motivation to understand the product and business side of things. You are keen to contribute to & influence the wider company direction and culture.

We're looking for people with passion, desire to learn and that are team players. You're encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description. Your skills and passion will stand out & set you apart—especially if your career has taken some extraordinary twists and turns. lemon.markets welcomes people from all different backgrounds, including age, citizenship, ethnic and racial origins, gender identities, individuals with disabilities, marital status, religions and ideologies, and sexual orientations to apply.

How we take care of you:

🚀Competitive compensation package:

We will offer you a mix of cash and stock options based on your appetite for upside.

⚙️ Thrive in a Tech-driven environment: We are truly an API-first company, developing products designed for & loved by developers. Technology is at the core of everything we do.

💎 Make a real impact: Shape the experience for our customers and us alike. Guide the team on all important technology decisions to bring the brokerage API live. Lay the foundation for many companies to come to offer brokerage services.

🕑 Flexible working hours: We value focus time. Encouraging everyone to minimize fixed meetings and leverage asynchronous communication.

💻 Build your perfect setup: MacBook, IDE, productivity tools. These are not expenses but investments. Please tell us what is needed to make you productive, and we will take care of it.

🏢 Onsite first, but remote flexible: We all believe that in-person collaboration is an integral part of working together, but we offer flexibility for working from home. Once a quarter the whole team meets for our offsite to hone this belief. If you are not based in Berlin just yet, we will provide assistance with relocation.

📈 Grow with us: We take your personal development seriously, meaning that we make sure to constantly mentor and challenge you. You will have access to a wide network of highly experienced technical leaders. So you can take the next level on your personal trajectory.

👶🏽 Create your perfect setup: Whether you are having a family or a passion that you want to follow on the side. We want to offer you a setting that fits your current stage in life.

About the process

We try to make this a fast and transparent process. Your process will look like this:

1. Get to know us - Talent - Jasmin, Talent | 40 minutes

2. Engineering Deep Dive - Sam, VP Engineering | 60 minutes

3. Product Development Deep Dive - Florian, VP Product - Max, Founder | 60 minutes

4. Meet us @ lemon.markets HQ | 210 minutes

   1. System Design - A selection of Engineers | 60 minutes

   2. Case study - Laura, VP Brokerage, Sam - VP engineering, Florian - VP Product  | 60 minutes

   3. Principles Session - A selection of lemoneers  | 45 minutes

   4. Meet the team - A selection of Engineers + a Product Manager| 45 minutes