💻 Lead Fullstack Engineer

1. You are a Fullstack Engineer with 2+ years of experience as a team lead. You not only have strong software design skills, but more importantly, you know how to guide a team in building scalable and reliable systems: from well-structured services and data models to APIs that hold up under pressure.
2. You’ve worked with technologies like Postgres (and perhaps also ElasticSearch) and you understand how to design REST APIs. Kotlin may be new to you, but that’s no problem: you master at least one general-purpose language and can coach others in learning new technologies. Bonus points if you have experience with Python.
3. By nature you are curious, and you encourage that in others as well. You have an eye for making the right choices in architecture and tooling — whether that’s Google Cloud, Kubernetes, or frontend frameworks like React, Elm, or Svelte — and you help your team navigate them.
4. And above all: you want to make an impact. You motivate your team to deliver solutions into production that are truly used by customers. Together, you build things that not only work, but are also robust, maintainable, and valuable.

1. Aiden is a young software company based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Since November 2024, we’ve been part of the Shop Circle team - operating independently, with the perks of being in good company.
2. With a tight-knit group of talented and fun people, we’re building great software to improve the way e-commerce works for customers and businesses.
3. Our mission: making great product advice accessible to everyone. We create tools that help our clients transform their expertise into intelligent customer-facing applications, guiding customers to find the perfect product. Our customers include industry leaders like MediaMarkt, LG, and many others.
4. We’re a small team, and we like it that way. Our clients love it too. And for our team, it means more ownership, more freedom, and actually getting stuff done. So no ticket-shuffling, but engineers who own problems end-to-end rather than just executing predefined tasks.
5. We’re ambitious, but that doesn’t mean we’re an "always on" type of company. You’ll get the freedom and flexibility to do your best work, your way.
6. As for our backend tech stack: We work with Kotlin, ElasticSearch, PostgreSQL, Svelte and Elm, with our infrastructure running on Kubernetes in Google Cloud. Experience with (part of this) stack is a bonus, but not required.

You’ll work closely with closely with Mayon (Product Lead), Dennis (CTO) and a team of fullstack devs and AI engineers to further grow our product. Your role is about providing direction, strengthening the team, and ensuring we make the right technical choices.

In your first month, you will:

• Get to know Aiden’s product, architecture, and codebase so you understand what the team is working with.
• Familiarize yourself with our stack (Kotlin, Postgres, APIs, frontend frameworks) and our development workflows.
• Take your place as a sparring partner and mentor for the team.

In your first quarter, you will:

• Take ownership of a domain within our software and set the course for improvements in design, performance, and reliability.
• Lead software design reviews, introduce best practices, and guide technical decisions.
• Work with your colleagues to refine requirements and translate them into scalable and maintainable solutions.

In your first year, you will:

• Drive larger architectural improvements and guide the team through their implementation.
• Coach, mentor, and challenge other engineers so that the bar keeps rising on code quality, testing, and deployment.
• Grow into a technical leader within the team: someone who connects product vision with technical strategy and ensures we build faster and smarter together.

We're not an IT consultancy, so we won't put you in a lease car. What we do offer - besides paying your salary - is a great workplace with some benefits that the big players don't give you:

1. Most importantly: you work at a small company. Whatever your role, you always have direct impact on how we work and grow.
2. The possibility to work partly from home. We have a great office in the heart of Utrecht, and we expect you to come in from time to time. That’s why you need to be based in the Netherlands.
3. Vacation days. You get 25 of those.
4. New parent time! When you have a child, we give you 2 extra weeks on top of statutory leave. This time doesn't count against your other vacation days.
5. And of course, time to study, research, and expand your knowledge. There's lots of knowledge to share within our team and plenty of room for courses or personal research time.

1. Create your CV and a brief description of why you'd be a good fit for us.
2. Send it to applications@aiden.cx.
3. We'll let you know within a few days if we see a potential match.

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