Software Team Lead (f/x/m)

spotixx is a Frankfurt-based European FinTech building technology for the regulated financial sector. Founded in 2019, we are a 60+people team with deep, established relationships across the German and wider European banking sector, built on years of fraud investigation and analytics work delivered inside major banks.

We are bootstrapped and set our own strategy and our own policies, without the compromises of chasing investor timelines. The market is moving toward us: European regulators are opening the door to cross-institutional financial crime intelligence, and we are scaling the team rapidly to meet strong inbound demand.

Tasks

We're looking for a Software Team Lead: a strong, hands-on engineer who is moving (or recently moved) into management and wants a small team to lead and grow with. You'll partner closely with our experienced technical lead, who owns the architectural direction of the platform; your remit is people, process, and delivery quality. You will set the engineering standards needed to build software for the regulated financial sector, you will make sure the team holds those standards, and you will lead by example with the code you write yourself.

Your immediate focus is leading delivery of our spotixx platform as it matures through its pilot phase with European banks. The team is small today and expected to grow rapidly over the next 12–24 months as we scale across new consortia, countries, and business lines and your role is expected to grow with it.

This is the start of a management career, not the end of an engineering one. We are looking for a leader in the making. You will stay close to the code for as long as it serves the team, while your remit, the size of the team you lead, and your strategic responsibility broaden over time.

Requirements

Required

· At least 8 years of relevant software development experience, with at least 5 in regulated industries (banking, payments, insurance, healthcare, public sector, defence, or similar).
· A strong, current hands-on engineer. You ship production code today and you are excited to keep doing so. You write code others want to learn from.
· Ready to step into leadership - or recently have. What matters is your attitude, judgement, and soft skills, not the number of years on the management side. You may currently be a senior engineer, tech lead in all-but-name, or in your first formal lead role.
· Strong soft skills for management. You communicate clearly, give and take feedback well, build trust quickly, and get people unblocked. You've shown leadership through influence even before it was your title.
· Deep experience working in heavily process-driven, regulated environments. Banking, payments, insurance, healthcare, public sector, defence, or similar - you understand why the process exists, you don't fight it, and you can set it for others. Familiarity with frameworks such as GDPR, BaFin/MaRisk, PSD2, SOC 2, or ISO 27001 is a strong advantage.
· Financial services exposure: direct experience delivering for banks, payment providers, or fintech is a plus; if not, you have worked in a comparably regulated industry and can credibly transfer that experience.
· Credible across backend and frontend. You don't need to be the deepest specialist on the team: but you can read, review, and contribute meaningfully across the stack.
· Cloud platform experience: production experience with GCP (preferred), AWS, or Azure; comfortable with IaC, containers, CI/CD.
· Excellent communication: present to bank executives as confidently as you debug production issues.
· Fluent English.

**AI-Native Development: Enthusiasm Required, Deep Experience Welcome
**
· Hands-on coding-agent experience (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or similar) on real work; professionally or in meaningful personal practice; you have formed opinions
· Genuinely excited about AI-native engineering: you see a future where 5 engineers with strong AI tooling outperform 20 without it
· Ready to learn fast alongside us: we'd rather hire someone ready for the adventure than wait for a fully-formed AI playbook

Desirable

· German language: optional, useful for client-facing work with German banks but not required (internal and most customer work happens in English)
· Python (FastAPI) + React/TypeScript, GCP specifics
· Multi-tenant SaaS or consortium-based deployment
· Cryptography or privacy-enhancing technologies
· SOC 2 / ISO 27001 implementation
· First-time formal management experience, or scaling a team you already lead from a handful of engineers to 10+
· Anti-financial crime domain (AML/KYC/fraud), or AI governance / EU AI Act compliance

**Tech Stack
**Backend: Python, FastAPI
Frontend: React 19, TypeScript, Vite, Vue.js
Auth: Keycloak, JWT
Cloud: GCP (Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud SQL, Cloud Run, GCS, Artifact Registry, IAM)
IaC / Containers: Terraform, Docker
CI/CD: GitHub Actions
Quality: Ruff, mypy, Bandit, pytest, ESLint, Vitest
AI Tooling: Claude Code, Codex

Benefits

• A genuine career step into management: start by leading a small team in a high-stakes, regulated environment, and grow with the team as we scale across consortia and business lines
• A clear path beyond first-line management: towards heading engineering across multiple product lines as the company grows
• A strong technical partnership: you will work alongside an experienced technical lead who owns architectural direction, so your leadership focus stays on people, process, and quality from day one
• Real influence over how a regulated engineering team is run: process, standards, hiring, culture
• High-impact products: technology that helps stop financial crime and govern AI in regulated industries
• Cutting-edge tech: MPC, privacy-enhancing technology, AI-native engineering
• Bootstrapped independence: we set our own strategy and our own pace
• Remote-first / flexible working within Germany; competitive salary and benefits

We welcome applications from all qualified individuals, as diversity enriches us. Your perspective matters: regardless of gender, age, origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. Applicants with disabilities will be given preference when equally qualified.