Founding Engineering Team Lead; HandsOn

A newly funded cybersecurity startup in Berlin is looking for a Engineering Team Lead to join as a founding team member and help design the core security, identity, and enforcement foundations of a next-generation AI-powered risk management platform.

We are an early-stage startup founded by experienced cybersecurity leaders with backgrounds in Israeli intelligence units.
We are looking for a hands‑on Founding Engineering Team Lead for a hybrid role based in central Berlin. If you are passionate about cybersecurity and AI, thrive in fast-paced startup environments, and enjoy building complex platforms from the ground up, this is an opportunity to make a real impact.

We’re building a next-generation cyber risk platform that helps enterprises understand, measure, and reduce identity risk  goal is to turn complex identity and security data into clear, actionable risk insights that CISOs and CTOs can trust. You will work from scratch on core platform components from day one, shaping how modern enterprises manage and reason about risk using cloud-native systems, AI-driven analysis, and automated enforcement through AI agents.

• Lead and grow a small, high-performing engineering team while remaining hands‑on
• Design, build, and review production backend and platform code alongside the team
• Own delivery of the engineering roadmap
  , balancing speed, quality, and security
• Act as a technical leader by setting architecture direction and enforcing engineering standards
• Contribute directly to critical features, integrations, and platform foundations
• Establish lightweight engineering processes that enable fast execution without bureaucracy
• Mentor engineers through code reviews
  , pairing, and technical guidance
• Contribute hands‑on in design and build architecture, configure systems, code 70% of the time in GoLang.
• Remove blockers and unblock delivery across backend, frontend, data, and Dev Ops
• Collaborate closely with CEO, CPTO, and product leadership on technical and execution decisions
• Support hiring
  , onboarding, and technical evaluation of engineers
• Foster a culture of ownership, pragmatism, and low ego
• Build whole Security platform setup from scratch
• Partner closely with backend and AI engineers to design secure service boundaries and deployment models
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex production incidents across infrastructure, networking, and application layers
• Build Po Cs and validate infrastructure and security design decisions in an early-stage environment
• Support compliance readiness by enabling controls, logging, and evidence collection for security frameworks
• Continuously improve platform cost efficiency
  , reliability, and operational maturity
• This role reports directly to CEO & CPTO

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience
• 2+ years of experience leading engineering teams while remaining hands‑on
• 2+ years of Go Lang experience
• 3+ years experience with AWS in production environments
• Strong code quality bar and experience with architectural reviews
• Ability to context‑switch between technical topics and people leadership
• Strong execution mindset and comfort operating under ambiguity
• Hands‑on coding mentality;
  can build things from scratch including security architecture yourself
• Hands‑on experience with Docker, Kubernetes (EKS) and containerized workloads
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (Git Hub Actions or similar)
• Experience with monitoring, logging, observability (Grafana, Open Telemetry, Prometheus)
• Experience with Coding Co Pilots (Claude Code, Git Hub Copilot, AWS Code Whisperer, Codex, etc.)
• Knowledge of Experience supporting production SaaS platforms
• High ownership mentality, startup mindset, and ability to move quickly
• Experience in startup or scale‑up environments
• Low ego, high commitment, and a true tech startup mentality
• Excellent English communication skills

Nice-to-have requirements:

• Previous experience as a founding or early-stage Engineering Manager
• Experience in cybersecurity
  , identity, or enterprise SaaS platforms
• Exposure to Dev Ops, SRE, or data engineering
• Experience with scaling teams and systems simultaneously
• Experience with security architecture, identity security, or security…