Why join the talent pool

Mission

Lead and grow the team responsible for the day-to-day experience of the people who build with KNIME, into a cohesive, high-performing group that makes that experience frictionless, enjoyable, and consistent.

Role Overview

As Engineering Team Lead, you will be responsible for the effectiveness of a large team: roughly ten engineers spanning a wide range of seniority, alongside a product owner, a QA engineer, and two UX designers. You will own how the team works rather than what it builds technically: its delivery predictability and quality, its health and ways of working, and the growth and hiring of its people, while leaving technical direction and ownership in the hands of your senior engineers. The role is as much about the team's place and visibility within the wider organisation and the growth of its people as it is about week-to-week delivery.

Responsibilities

• Own the team's overall effectiveness: its delivery predictability, the quality of what it ships, and its ability to deliver consistently.

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of around ten engineers across a wide range of seniority, giving senior engineers the room to own technical direction, helping junior engineers and students grow and feel part of the team, and handling performance management when someone's delivery or growth stalls.

• Own the hiring bar and shape the team's composition as it evolves.

• Shape how the team works day to day, from its processes and ceremonies to feedback loops that turn usage data and QA findings into a healthy, well-prioritised backlog.

• Partner closely with the product owner and UX, managing expectations and pushing back when scope or timelines are unrealistic.

• Represent the team within the wider organisation, raising its visibility and keeping its work aligned with company-wide strategy.

• Keep a clear read on team health, and resolve recurring problems through systemic fixes rather than one-off firefighting.

• Develop enough understanding of the team's architecture to weigh in on technical decisions and make good calls, while leaving deep technical ownership to your senior engineers.

Requirements

• Experience leading a software engineering team: at least two years in a leadership role, with a track record of owning delivery, quality, performance, and team health.

• A real enthusiasm for leading and developing people. You draw your energy from coaching, unblocking, and building healthy teams, and you would rather enable a strong, independent team than be its strongest individual contributor.

• A solid engineering background, broad enough to span both backend and frontend. You do need to understand and engage credibly with what your team is working on, from Java services to a Vue.js / TypeScript frontend, with some Python in the mix. A degree in a STEM or scientific field is welcome, but not required if you bring equivalent experience.

• A strong grasp of how engineering teams deliver: prioritisation, planning, and agile ways of working, with the instinct to build healthy processes and a well-managed backlog rather than to firefight.

• Comfort working across functions and upward: partnering closely with product and UX, managing expectations and pushing back when they are unrealistic, and representing your team's interests in the wider organisation.

• Fluency in English, the team's working language.

• Nice to have: prior experience with our core stack (Java, Vue.js / TypeScript), experience with SaaS products, and a feel for UX, given the team's focus on the user-facing experience.

• Also a plus: experience helping a team or organisation adopt AI in day-to-day engineering, whether by establishing shared practices, building tooling, or lifting adoption among developers.

Leveling

You report directly to the Director User-Facing Applications, who is the hiring manager for this role and in turn reports to the VP Technology. The team you lead is the largest in the user-facing engineering organisation.

What Success Looks Like

• The team delivers predictably and to a high standard, and keeps doing so without you in the day-to-day execution loop.

• It works as one cohesive, resilient group: knowledge is shared, key-person risk is low, and people can work across the team's areas rather than being boxed into narrow streams.

• Team health stays strong across the full seniority range: senior engineers have real autonomy to own and shape their work, and students and junior engineers are well integrated rather than stranded on peripheral topics.

• Usage data and QA findings flow into planning as a matter of course, and the backlog is healthy, well-prioritised, and trusted.

What we offer

• An exceptional team to lead: highly capable, independent engineers who are a pleasure to work with. A team this healthy is rare to inherit, and leading it is a real joy.

• A role that matters, at a pivotal moment: You will lead our largest and most visible user-facing team through a key scaling phase for the company, with real ownership of how it works and how it grows.

• Visible impact: Your team shapes the experience that everyone building with KNIME relies on.

• Deep collaboration in a low-ego, global culture: Work closely with fellow team leads, senior engineers, architects, QA, and UX in an open environment spanning more than 30 nationalities that values transparency, low-ego collaboration, and quiet excellence.

• Continuous learning: Recurring personal leadership coachings, hands-on challenges, peer exchange, soft-skill training and learning cafés, and exposure to cutting-edge AI and data-analytics work.

• Flexibility, health and wellbeing: Hybrid working, flexible hours, subsidised sports or yoga courses, physiotherapy, and flu shots at select locations.

• Great places to work: Beautiful offices, including one in the heart of Berlin Kreuzberg, along with the everyday things that make office days good: shared breakfasts and lunches, a stocked fruit basket, and celebrations.