Senior Software Engineer / Technical Lead

Senior Software Engineer / Technical Lead – Build It. Own It. Lead It. 📍 Utrecht · Hybrid / office-first (4 days) 🌍 EU work authorisation required 💰 Competitive salary + benefits The short version A well-funded cybersecurity startup in Utrecht is looking for an engineer who can do two things really well: build software hands-on and take technical ownership. You’ll still spend the majority of your time engineering, but you’ll also become someone the co-founder can trust to take a problem, run with it, make the technical calls and help bring others along with you. No layers of management. No waiting around for decisions. Lots of building. What they're building The product sits at the intersection of cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure and AI. It helps organisations securely control and audit access to sensitive infrastructure such as databases, Kubernetes clusters and internal systems. The next phase is heavily focused on securing how AI agents interact with those environments. What you'll actually do Design, build and ship features from idea through to productionTake ownership of technical projects without needing constant directionMake architecture and engineering decisions across backend, infrastructure and AIHelp break down and delegate work where neededBe a technical sounding board for the co-founder and wider engineering teamCommunicate clearly around decisions, trade-offs, blockers and prioritiesRaise the engineering standard while remaining very hands-on yourself What they're looking for Strong software engineering fundamentals with solid backend experienceBroad enough technically to understand infrastructure, deployment and production systemsSomeone genuinely hands-on — this isn't a people-management position.Previous experience taking technical ownership or naturally becoming the person others rely onProactive rather than waiting for tasks to be handed overStrong communication skills and comfortable working closely with foundersGolang, Docker and Kubernetes experience is at the coreSecurity, infrastructure or DevOps experience is a strong plus The environment Small team, high trust and a lot of autonomy. They’re looking for someone who can eventually be told, “Can you own this?” — and the co-founder knows it’ll be thought through, communicated properly and shipped. You don't need to move away from coding to lead here. Quite the opposite.