Founding Engineering Team Lead - Cybersecurity & AI Platform

About the Role and Company

Join an emerging cybersecurity startup in Berlin focused on building a state-of-the-art AI-driven risk management platform. As a founding Engineering Team Lead, you will play a pivotal role designing core security, identity, and enforcement features of the platform from the ground up. The company was established by veteran cybersecurity professionals with experience in elite Israeli intelligence units.

This role is hybrid with an onsite requirement in central Berlin. It offers a unique chance to shape how enterprises handle identity risk by leveraging cloud-native tech, AI analysis, and automated enforcement agents.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and expand a small yet high-impact engineering team while remaining deeply involved in coding and architecture.
• Design and develop backend and platform systems, and conduct code reviews with the team.
• Oversee the delivery of the engineering roadmap, balancing speed, quality, and security needs.
• Set the technical architecture and engineering standards, driving them across the team.
• Directly create critical features, integrations, and platform infrastructure components.
• Implement lightweight engineering processes that enable rapid execution without heavy bureaucracy.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews, pairing, and technical coaching.
• Spend approximately 70% of your time hands-on coding, primarily using GoLang.
• Remove obstacles that hinder progress across backend, frontend, data, and DevOps domains.
• Collaborate closely with executive leadership including the CEO and CPTO on technical strategy and execution.
• Support recruitment, onboarding, and technical assessments of engineering hires.
• Foster a culture of ownership, pragmatism, and humility.
• Build the security platform infrastructure from scratch.
• Work alongside backend and AI engineers to establish secure service boundaries and deployment strategies.
• Diagnose and resolve complex production issues spanning infrastructure, networking, and applications.
• Create proof-of-concepts and validate infrastructure and security designs at this early stage.
• Support compliance efforts by enabling controls, logging, and evidence collection for relevant security standards.
• Continuously enhance platform cost efficiency, reliability, and operational maturity.
• This position reports directly to the CEO and CPTO.

Required Qualifications

• Over 10 years of professional software engineering experience.
• At least 3 years leading engineering teams with a hands-on approach.
• Minimum 3 years experience coding in GoLang.
• At least 3 years working with AWS in production environments.
• Proven high standards of code quality and experience conducting architectural reviews.
• Ability to switch context between technical tasks and leadership duties seamlessly.
• Strong execution focus with ability to operate effectively under ambiguity.
• Hands-on approach capable of independently designing and implementing security architecture.
• Proficient with Docker, Kubernetes (EKS), and containerized workloads.
• Experience building and managing CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or equivalent).
• Skilled in monitoring, logging, and observability tools such as Grafana, OpenTelemetry, and Prometheus.
• Experience with AI coding assistants like Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, AWS CodeWhisperer, or Codex.
• Background supporting production SaaS platforms.
• Startup mindset with a high ownership attitude and ability to move swiftly.
• Proven experience working in startup or scale-up technology environments.
• Humble, committed, and embodying a genuine technical startup mentality.
• Excellent English communication skills.

Preferred Experience

• Previous role as a founding or early-stage Engineering Manager.
• Experience in cybersecurity, identity, or enterprise SaaS products.
• Exposure to DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or data engineering.
• Experience scaling engineering organizations and systems simultaneously.
• Background in security architecture, identity security, or security engineering.
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks such as NIS2, DORA, ISO 27001, SOC 2.
• Understanding OAuth/OIDC, API tokens, identity providers, scopes, SSO, SCIM, roles, RBAC/ABAC, and service accounts.
• Knowledge of cloud identity and security controls like IAM, CloudTrail, Azure Active Directory (Entra ID).
• Hands-on experience with SIEM tools such as Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, or IBM QRadar.
• Design of permission models, identity graphs, and access control frameworks.
• Knowledge of tokenization, Zero Trust security principles, least privilege, and continuous verification.
• Security experience relevant to AI/LLM systems, agent logic, or a strong willingness to learn quickly about these topics.
• Familiarity with AI agent behaviors, LLM security concerns, or sandboxing approaches.
• Experience in cybersecurity or identity startups is a plus.
• Personal interest in rock or metal music.
• Proficiency in German is desirable.

Benefits

• Equity as a founding team member with Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs) in a cybersecurity firm.
• Market-competitive salary with flexible arrangements suited to early-stage startups.
• Founding team status with significant influence over company direction and technical decisions.
• Strong funding providing runway to build, hire, and execute rapidly.
• Opportunity to contribute meaningfully to security architecture involving identity, AI agents, and threat enforcement.
• High degree of autonomy to design and execute without heavy corporate restrictions.
• Direct collaboration with the CEO and CPTO enabling rapid iteration and alignment.
• Engagement in cutting-edge domains including identity security, SaaS integration, and AI governance.
• Steep learning curve to gain deep expertise in cybersecurity, identity management, and AI technologies.
• Fast-tracked career progression potential as the engineering team scales.
• Located in Berlin, benefiting from a premier tech ecosystem focused on cybersecurity and AI.
• Your architecture and code will serve as the cornerstone of the entire platform.
• Access to high-quality equipment and modern developer tools from the start.
• Regular team offsite events fostering strong team cohesion and shared momentum.