Summary
✨ AI‑Generated
Lead a newly formed research team exploring the future of AI-native development environments and developer tools. As a founding technical leader, you will define technical direction, investigate how coding agents can collaborate with developers, evaluate emerging technologies, and turn promising concepts into prototypes. The role combines hands-on technical leadership with team building and long-term product exploration.
Highlights
Founding technical leadership role with significant ownership over technical direction, a small senior team, emerging AI developer technologies, prototyping and future product concepts.
Description
🚀 We’re Hiring: Team Lead – AI-Native IDE & Developer Tools
📍 Amsterdam, Netherlands | Hybrid | Full-time, Permanent
We are looking for a senior IDE / Developer Tools expert to join a new research team in Amsterdam and help shape the next generation of AI-native developer tooling.
This is not a traditional engineering management role.
You will join as a founding technical leader, building and leading a small team of senior experts focused on the future of IDEs, AI coding agents, and human–AI developer workflows.
You will have significant ownership in defining technical direction, exploring emerging technologies, and turning promising ideas into prototypes and future product directions.
What You Will Do
Lead the technical vision for next-generation AI-native IDEs and developer experiencesExplore how AI agents and human developers can collaborate within modern development environmentsTrack and evaluate developments in IDEs, developer tools, and agentic coding systems, including Claude, Cursor, Trae, Google Antigravity, and other emerging productsDevelop proof-of-concept prototypes and demos to validate new technologies and ideasProduce technology scouting reports and technical recommendations to support future investment and product decisionsHire, mentor, and lead a small team of senior technical expertsBuild relationships with universities, research institutes, startups, and industry expertsWork closely with international teams to translate research and emerging technologies into future product direction
Who Are We Looking For?
We would particularly like to speak with senior engineers, technical leads, architects, or research leaders with strong hands-on experience in:
IDE Development | Developer Tools | Developer Experience | Agentic Developer Tooling
Required:
Proven hands-on experience in IDE development, developer-tools development, or agentic harness engineeringTeam leadership experience, including leading engineers or researchers, participating in hiring decisions, and taking ownership of technical directionStrong understanding of developer experience and what makes developer tools effective, practical, and user-friendlyAbility to bridge research and product, technical details and strategic directionStrong written and spoken EnglishBased in or willing to relocate to Amsterdam
Nice to Have
Experience in one or more of the following would be highly relevant:
IntelliJ Platform / PSILanguage Server Protocol (LSP)Code intelligenceCompiler toolchainsBuild systems and developer infrastructureAI coding assistants / coding agentsLLM integration into developer workflowsContext engineering and agent orchestrationEvaluation and verification of AI-assisted development systemsExperience working across international and distributed technical teamsAn existing network within the developer-tools, research, startup, or technology communityInterest in building world-class developer tools for an emerging mobile operating system
Deep technical expertise remains at the heart of this role.
What We Offer
A highly competitive compensation packageRelocation allowance for candidates relocating for the positionAnnual performance bonusAttractive short-term and long-term incentive programsThe opportunity to join a newly established research team and play a key role in shaping the future of AI-native developer tools
If you have built IDEs, developer tools, or AI-powered coding systems and are interested in helping define what the next generation of software development could look like, I’d be very happy to connect.
📩 Feel free to message me directly for a confidential discussion.
