Principal Engineer

Solaris is Europe's leading embedded finance platform. Solaris’ full German banking license and proprietary modular B2B tech stack empowers its partners – from SMEs to large, multinational, non-financial companies – to offer compliant, customer-centric banking services, providing seamless experiences to customers across all industries. Founded in 2016, Solaris pioneered the Banking-as-a-Service market with an unparalleled combination of tech and banking. Solaris is headquartered in Berlin and employs 300 people in Europe. Your Role • Lead the design of complex, distributed micro-services and platforms, focusing on scalability, resilience, and maintainability. • Ensure architecturally inter-connected teams are aligned; facilitate bi-directional information flow between domain teams and the wider tech organization. • Drive high-level technology decisions, including framework selection, cloud infrastructure strategy, and third-party integrations. • Take accountability for the reliability, security, and performance of the fleet of micro-services and platform capabilities. • Establish and enforce coding standards, code review guidelines, and architectural patterns to ensure high-quality delivery. • Contribute to and champion infrastructure-as-code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, and observability tools to maximize developer efficiency. • Lead the resolution of complex, cross-team technical incidents and conduct blameless post-mortems to prevent recurrence. • Help teammates grow as craftspeople through technical mentorship, pair programming, and sponsorship. • Translate complex technical topics into business value for Product Owners and stakeholders; translate business goals into technical requirements for engineers. We'd love to see Depending on your level of experience, your responsibilities and scope of role will range. We don’t care much about fancy titles, but rather about real personal and professional development, as laid out in our learning framework. Let’s figure together out how you can contribute to our team. • A bachelor degree in Computer Science or equivalent. • 10+ years of total professional experience in Software Engineering. • 3+ years in a Technical Leadership role (e.g., Staff, Principal, Lead Architect) driving technical decisions across multiple teams or critical systems. • Proven track record of designing and evolving high-traffic, distributed systems or APIs. • Experience operating in a DevOps/You-Build-It-You-Run-It culture. • Possess the ability to read, review, and debug code in multiple modern languages (e.g., Java, Go) and adapt to the right tool for the job. • Deep expertise in designing distributed, high-throughput systems. Proven ability to select appropriate architectural patterns (e.g., Event-Driven, Microservices, CQRS, Hexagonal Architecture) based on business requirements and trade-offs. • Ability to evolve monolithic or legacy systems into modern architectures using different design patterns, without disrupting business continuity. • Advanced understanding of the container ecosystem and orchestration strategies. Capable of designing services that are truly cloud-agnostic and scalable. • Philosophically aligned with "Everything as Code." Capable of guiding teams in managing complex infrastructure. • Ability to execute, deliver, and guide others through unclear goals and complex problem spaces without supervision. • Excellent written and verbal English (German is a plus). Able to explain trade-offs (e.g., Consistency vs. Availability) to non-technical audiences. • Ability to influence roadmaps and engineering culture without direct managerial authority. • A curious, constant learner who proactively shares knowledge via tech talks, documentation, and coaching. Benefits • Home office budget. • Learning & development budget of €1000 per year and a transparent growth framework to support your career goals. • Competitive salary and a variable remuneration program. • Monthly meal allowance. • Deutschland ticket subsidy. • 28 vacation days, increasing by 2 days after 2 years and 3 days after 3 years with Solaris. • Opportunity to work abroad for up to 12 weeks per year. While job ads usually paint an ideal picture of a candidate, studies show that most applicants meet an average of 60% of the criteria. Unfortunately, many promising candidates tend to apply only if they meet all the criteria. So if you think you have what it takes, but don't necessarily meet every single item in the job description, please contact us anyway. We'd love to talk with you and find out if you might be a good fit for us. At Solaris, we are committed to nurturing an inclusive environment, where all Solarians feel valued, respected and supported. We are dedicated to building a diverse workforce that reflects the diversity of our communities. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of color, ethnicity, religion, sex, origin, disability, marital status, citizenship, or gender identity. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know. Information on data processing: DE: https://www.solarisgroup.com/gdpr_notice_de EN: https://www.solarisgroup.com/gdpr_notice_en The annual gross salary range for this position is: €100.000—€125.000 EUR