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.

Experience
10-14 yrs