Staff Software Engineer

Staff Software Engineer Berlin | Hybrid Working | Sustainability Technology Technology creates the biggest impact when it's closely aligned with product vision. We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer who wants to shape both. Our client is a leading technology company in the sustainability space, helping organisations make smarter, more responsible decisions through innovative software. As they continue to scale, they're investing in the next generation of their platform and are looking for an experienced technical leader to own a strategic product domain and help define its future. This is not a role focused solely on delivery. It's an opportunity to become the technical and architectural authority for a critical area of the platform, partnering with Product, Engineering Leadership and business stakeholders to influence what gets built, how it gets built, and where the product evolves next. The Opportunity As a Staff Software Engineer, you will take end-to-end ownership of a key business domain, driving architectural decisions that will shape the platform for years to come. You'll combine deep engineering expertise with product thinking, ensuring solutions are scalable, maintainable and aligned with long-term business goals. Working across multiple teams, you'll provide technical direction, identify strategic opportunities, and help transform ideas into products that deliver real customer value. You'll play a crucial role in defining engineering standards, advancing AI-assisted development practices, and creating a clear architectural vision that enables fast-moving, autonomous product teams. What You'll Be Doing Own the technical strategy and architecture for a major product domain.Partner closely with Product and Engineering leaders to influence roadmap decisions and future product direction.Design scalable, resilient distributed systems that support business growth and evolving customer needs.Drive platform-wide architectural initiatives and establish engineering best practices.Balance immediate delivery needs with long-term technical sustainability.Evaluate new technologies, patterns and approaches that can accelerate business outcomes.Lead technical discovery and solution design for complex initiatives.Drive alignment across multiple teams, ensuring architectural consistency without creating bottlenecks.Mentor senior engineers and act as a trusted technical advisor across the organisation.Champion modern engineering practices, including AI-assisted software development. What We're Looking For Architectural Leadership Significant experience operating at Senior Staff, Staff, Principal or equivalent level.Proven track record of defining architecture for complex products and distributed systems.Experience owning technical direction across multiple teams or a large product area.Strong systems thinking with the ability to connect technical decisions to business outcomes. Software Engineering Excellence Expert-level software engineering skills with deep experience designing and building modern platforms.Strong Java and Kotlin experience.Additional experience with Go or Node.js would be beneficial.Strong understanding of engineering quality, scalability, observability and operational excellence. Distributed Systems & Data Deep experience with event-driven architectures and asynchronous systems.Hands-on expertise with technologies and approaches such as Kafka, CQRS, Event Sourcing and API Gateways.Strong understanding of data architecture, relational databases and distributed data challenges.Experience evolving systems and data models at scale while maintaining platform reliability. Modern Engineering Comfortable leveraging AI-powered engineering tools as part of the development lifecycle.Experience working with cloud-native architectures, ideally within Azure environments.Knowledge of Kubernetes, Docker and modern platform engineering practices. Influence & Communication Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills.Able to simplify complex technical concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences.Experienced in producing architectural proposals, decision records and strategic technology roadmaps.Natural collaborator who can influence through expertise rather than authority. Why This Role? Own a strategically important domain with genuine influence over product direction.Shape the architecture of a platform solving real sustainability challenges.Work alongside highly talented international engineers, product leaders and architects.Influence company-wide engineering practices and technology strategy.Help define how AI-enhanced engineering is adopted across the organisation.Enjoy a culture that values autonomy, technical excellence and continuous learning.