Tech Lead

Kaiko Systems

Tech Lead overseeing a Berlin engineering team at Kaiko Systems, enhancing global shipping technology. Hands-on engineering role with mentorship and leadership responsibilities.

Posted 7/27/2026full-timeBerlin • 🇩🇪 GermanySeniorWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates strong leadership in engineering management, with a focus on mentoring, resource allocation, and hands-on coding. Proficient in Python, Django, TypeScript, React, and infrastructure tools like Docker and Postgres, while fostering a culture of continuous improvement and effective communication.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Engineering Team LeadershipHands-On CodingPython / Django ExpertiseTypeScript / React ProficiencyMentorship and Growth of Engineers

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

PythonDjangoTypeScriptReactDockerPostgresRapid PrototypingProduction Code WritingArchitectural GuidancePerformance Conversations

Soft Skills

MentoringGiving FeedbackReading a RoomDisagreeing with Senior PeopleTeam Management

Tools & Technologies

Cloud InfrastructureEngineering StandardsEngineering ProcessesOn-Call Rotation ManagementPerformance Management Tools

Industry Keywords

Engineering ManagementTeam AllocationContinuous ImprovementProduction-Grade TasteFluent English

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

CloudDjangoDockerPostgresPythonReactTypeScript

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Prototype the hard problems yourself.
When product direction is unclear, you write the spike: small, ugly, fast, built to surface the real complexity.
You hand the load-bearing core to the team, stay in the loop while they scale it, and defend the architectural choices that came out of the prototype.
Run the team day-to-day: standups, 1:1s, performance conversations, hiring loops, the engineering side of the on-call rotation.
You set the cadence and the cadence holds.
Allocate engineers to projects based on real knowledge of their strengths, weaknesses, and where they need to grow.
Mentor and grow people. Give hard feedback the day it is relevant, not at review season.
Extract architectural guidance from the CTO and VP Engineering and turn it into a plan the team can execute on.
Stay hands-on: write production code, review the hard MRs, defend simplicity over premature abstraction, push back on shipping blockers.
Continuously improve how we work — engineering process, tools, standards — as we grow within the UniSea Group.

Requirements

What you’ll need

2–5+ years leading or managing a team of engineers; you have hired, mentored, given hard feedback, and made calls that did not work and learned from them.
Depth matters more than years.
Engineer first in your identity.
You enjoy the code, you read other people's code, and you have strong, defendable opinions on language and framework choice, testing posture, and abstraction level.
Genuinely hands-on.
Strong on at least one of: Python / Django, TypeScript / React, infra (Docker / Postgres / cloud).
Comfortable reading the others.
You can still write production code today.
Earned soft skills.
You can disagree with senior people and have them think more of you afterward.
You can give an engineer feedback that lands.
You can read a room.
Real track record of growing people.
You can name engineers who grew under you, what they grew into, and what you did to help.
Resource-allocation instinct based on real knowledge of people, not a spreadsheet.
Rapid-prototyping reflex.
Production-grade taste.
Fluent English.
German is not required.
Based in Berlin or willing to relocate.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Real ownership of a ~10-engineer team shipping to global shipping operators.
A codebase that does serious work: AI on the customer path, offline PWA syncing event-sourced state from on-vessel installations, computer-vision pipelines on production traffic.
The stability of an international group (UniSea) combined with the speed and ownership of a startup.
Direct exposure to the CTO and CEO; in the room for the calls that matter.
A diverse, international team of maritime experts, engineers, and commercial talent.
Central Berlin office at Münzstraße (Mitte).
Competitive salary, meaningful equity, modern equipment.
Regular team events, offsites, and a culture that takes itself seriously without being stiff.