Vice President of Engineering (Berlin, Germany)

Vice President of Engineering

Company Overview

The AI-driven trade platform transforming industrial supply in infrastructure, energy, and construction materials. It connects vetted suppliers across Asia, Europe, and the GCC region with local demand through a single integrated platform.

Its proprietary AI stack digitizes and automates the full lifecycle of materials trade — from procurement and pricing to inventory, logistics, and embedded financing — replacing thousands of manual, relationship-driven processes with real-time orchestration.

Buyers gain instant quotes, reliable availability, and predictable delivery through a unified operating system. Suppliers benefit from accurate forecasting, disciplined demand management, and seamless integration into cross-border fulfillment networks. The company partners with leading brands to run both dropship and cross-dock fulfillment motions for large-scale transactions, turning global supply chains into predictable, repeatable, software-like workflows.

Backed by top-tier investors and institutional financing partners, the company has scaled to triple-digit-million GMV, operates across six international markets, and is rapidly expanding toward profitability. With a team of 80+ people across Berlin (HQ) and Asia, it is building the world’s first industrial-grade AI operating system for materials — redefining how global trade works in one of the world’s largest and most essential industries.

Job Summary

This is a strategic and hands-on leadership role at the core of the next phase of growth. As VP of Engineering, you will be responsible for ensuring the stability, performance, and reliability of our current AI-first marketplace platform, while simultaneously leading the evolution toward more scalable, cloud-native, and service-oriented architectures designed to support rapid innovation and long-term scale.

You will work closely with the CEO, CPTO, Product, and Design leadership, alongside a high-caliber engineering team, to translate ambitious product and business vision into reliable, well-architected technology. This role offers a rare opportunity to shape both today’s platform and the future technical foundation of an AI-driven marketplace operating at increasing scale and complexity.

Your Mission

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, grow, and mentor a high-performing engineering organization across multiple teams and domains.
• Develop engineering leaders and managers, fostering accountability, ownership, and technical excellence.
• Build a strong, inclusive engineering culture grounded in psychological safety and high standards.
• Partner closely with Business and Product leadership on roadmap planning, prioritization, and trade-offs.
• Represent engineering perspectives in executive and business discussions.
• Align technology strategy with company goals and customer outcomes.
• Drive Platform Evolution Ensure continuous improvement, stability, and performance of the existing marketplace platform.
• Lead the architectural evolution toward scalable, cloud-native, microservice-based systems.
• Balance short-term delivery needs with long-term technical health and scalability.
• Champion Scalable, AI-First Architecture Define and enforce principles for modern, maintainable, and scalable SaaS and marketplace architecture.
• Guide the integration of AI/ML capabilities (e.g. LLMs, recommendations, intelligent workflows) into production systems.
• Anticipate future technical and platform needs as the business scales.
• Ensure Operational Excellence and Reliability Own system reliability, performance, security, and uptime across all environments.
• Strengthen DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and observability.
• Drive disciplined engineering processes, metrics, and delivery predictability.
• Foster Technical Innovation Encourage experimentation and thoughtful adoption of new technologies that improve scalability, reliability, and developer productivity.
• Create an environment where teams can innovate while maintaining strong operational rigor.

Requirements / Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including senior leadership roles (Director, Head of Engineering, VP) in SaaS, marketplace, or platform businesses.
• Proven experience leading teams through platform scaling, architectural transformation, or modernization initiatives.
• Strong hands-on background in software architecture, distributed systems, APIs, and data-driven platforms.
• Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure), microservices, and event-driven architectures.
• Solid knowledge of DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation, and observability.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to connect technical decisions to business impact.
• A genuine passion for building teams, scaling systems, and delivering technology that creates meaningful customer value.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience operating in AI-enabled or AI-first product environments is a strong plus.

Location

Berlin, Berlin, Germany (On-site)

Equal Opportunity Statement

We value diverse backgrounds and encourage applications even if not every requirement is met. We are an equal-opportunity employer and welcome applicants from all backgrounds, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, or any other characteristic. We believe that diversity drives innovation, creativity, and collective strength.