(RD) Engineering Team Lead at Backbase (Krakow, Poland)

Backbase· Krakow, Poland·5d ago

Job description

Engineering Team Lead (ETL)

The Job in Short

The ETL is the "Captain" of a single squad. This is a "player-coach" role focused on delivery predictability, people leadership, and day-to-day execution. You are a Senior+ Engineer who manages people, not a manager who used to code; if you cannot open the IDE and debug a production issue, you cannot perform this role.

Meet the Job

Delivery Mastery: Optimize the team’s "Idea to Production" cycle time and strengthen delivery predictability.
Talent Density: Own 1:1s, performance calibration, hiring decisions, and succession planning for your squad of 6–9 engineers.
Hands-on Leadership: Spend ~50% of your time on system design and ~20% on hands-on development like code reviews and unblocking technical issues.
Conflict Resolution: Mediate interpersonal or cross-team conflicts early to protect team cohesion and delivery.
BS Detector: Use your technical depth to spot unrealistic estimates, fragile designs, or risk blind spots.
Emergency Response: During critical incidents, jump in technically or coordinate the response effectively.
AI-Native Engineering: Lead the adoption of agentic tooling, LLM workflows, and AI automation within your team to accelerate the development lifecycle.

How About You?

You have 5+ years of experience and have shipped production code recently.
You have an explicit desire to lead people but remain an active technical contributor.
You possess high emotional intelligence and resilience under pressure.
You are a strong unblocker who translates and synthesizes rather than just relaying messages.

Why work at Backbase

Culture: Described as “ambition without ego,” “bias for action,” “you own what you ship,” and “the work is the standard.” Flat structure with no micromanagement.
Work model: Hybrid – “Where you do your best work is up to you.” Offices in 17 locations globally.
Perks: Annual learning budget, global exposure, wellness support, real ownership of projects from day one.
Engineering focus: 50% of the team in R&D; real AI running in production, not just pilots.

About Backbase

Company Overview

One-liner: Backbase builds the AI-native Banking OS that unifies digital channels, front office, and operations so banks can coordinate customers, employees, and AI agents from one platform.
Entity Type: Private (no public ticker; no funding rounds disclosed – appears organically grown)
Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Founded: 2003
Founders: Not publicly available (described as “founder-led” but names not stated on the provided sources)

Core Business

Primary industry: Banking technology / financial services software
Target customers: B2B – large banking institutions (120+ banks globally, serving 75M+ daily users)
Mission/purpose: “We built something that didn't exist before – an AI-native Banking OS where humans and AI agents work side by side, at scale, inside real banks.”

Products & Services

AI-native Banking OS: A unified platform that sits above legacy cores, CRMs, and data platforms. It orchestrates customer engagement (digital banking, conversational banking, front-office workspaces) and banking operations (high-volume processes like disputes, payments, lending). Designed to be deployed incrementally without rip-and-replace. Includes native AI agents for governance, automation, and auditability.

Market Standing

Valuation: Not disclosed
Key Metric: 2,000+ employees globally, 50% of team in R&D, 120+ banks as customers, 75M+ active daily users across the platform
Notable Investors/Partners: Not publicly available
Growth Signals: Expanding globally with 16 offices across 5 continents; notable customer examples include I&M Bank (Africa) which grew onboarding from 2,000 to 21,000 new customers per month, and Techcombank (Vietnam) achieving 50% of savings and investments through digital. The company is actively hiring and describes itself as “in the middle of the biggest shift in banking’s history.”

Competitive Advantages

Unified Frontline architecture – breaks down fragmentation between digital channels, front office, and operations, enabling banks to move fast without sacrificing compliance or security
AI-native from the ground up – not a bolt-on; full governance and audit trails for every AI decision
Progressive modernization – works with existing cores, no big-bang migration required
18+ years of banking domain expertise (since 2003) with a singular focus on banking since 2012

Strategic Focus

Deepening AI integration into banking workflows (Elastic Operations – scaling throughput without scaling headcount)
Expanding global footprint (17 offices, including recent additions in Hyderabad, Riyadh, Mexico City, and Toronto)
Continuing to shift banks from legacy fragmentation to a unified, composable operating system

Sources

Job description

Why work at Backbase

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