<div class="show-more-less-html__markup show-more-less-html__markup--clamp-after-5 relative overflow-hidden"> <p>Kaiko Systems is a Berlin-based maritime technology company making global shipping safer and smarter. Our AI-powered platform helps shipping companies digitalize vessel inspections, compliance, and fleet health, and is trusted by 40+ customers worldwide. In 2026 we joined forces with UniSea, a leading Norwegian maritime software provider, combining startup pace with the strength of an international group.</p><br/><p>We are now looking for a Tech Lead to run our Berlin engineering team day-to-day: a hands-on engineer who prototypes the hard problems, allocates the right people to the right work, mentors the team, and turns architectural direction from our CTO and VP Engineering into a plan the team can execute on. You will lead around 10 engineers (most of the team), reporting to the VP Engineering, with direct exposure to the CTO and CEO.</p><br/>Tasks<br/><ul><br/><li>Prototype the hard problems yourself. When product direction is unclear, you write the spike: small, ugly, fast, built to surface the real complexity. You hand the load-bearing core to the team, stay in the loop while they scale it, and defend the architectural choices that came out of the prototype</li><br/><li>Run the team day-to-day: standups, 1:1s, performance conversations, hiring loops, the engineering side of the on-call rota. You set the cadence and the cadence holds</li><br/><li>Allocate engineers to projects based on real knowledge of their strengths, weaknesses, and where they need to grow. You make those calls and you defend them</li><br/><li>Mentor and grow people. Give hard feedback the day it is relevant, not at review season. Spot the engineer who is stuck and unstick them</li><br/><li>Extract architectural guidance from the CTO and VP Engineering and turn it into a plan the team can execute on. Architectural decisions sit with them; landing those decisions sits with you</li><br/><li>Stay hands-on: write production code, review the hard MRs, defend simplicity over premature abstraction, push back on shipping blockers</li><br/><li>Continuously improve how we work — engineering process, tools, standards — as we grow within the UniSea Group</li><br/></ul><br/>Requirements<br/><ul><br/><li>2–5+ years leading or managing a team of engineers; you have hired, mentored, given hard feedback, and made calls that did not work and learned from them. Depth matters more than years</li><br/><li>Engineer first in your identity. You enjoy the code, you read other people's code, and you have strong, defendable opinions on language and framework choice, testing posture, and abstraction level</li><br/><li>Genuinely hands-on. Strong on at least one of: Python / Django, TypeScript / React, infra (Docker / Postgres / cloud). Comfortable reading the others. You can still write production code today</li><br/><li>Earned soft skills. You can disagree with senior people and have them think more of you afterward. You can give an engineer feedback that lands. You can read a room</li><br/><li>Real track record of growing people. You can name engineers who grew under you, what they grew into, and what you did to help</li><br/><li>Resource-allocation instinct based on real knowledge of people, not a spreadsheet</li><br/><li>Rapid-prototyping reflex. When you do not know how hard a piece of work is, your instinct is to write code, not to schedule a meeting</li><br/><li>Production-grade taste. You know the difference between a spike and a shippable system, and you build prototypes that can grow into the real thing without a full rewrite</li><br/><li>Fluent English. German is not required</li><br/><li>Based in Berlin or willing to relocate. Flexible on office attendance, but close enough that "hey, let's meet tomorrow" actually works</li><br/></ul><br/><p>Nice to have</p><br/><ul><br/><li>Maritime, logistics, or other physical-world-meets-software domains</li><br/><li>Computer-vision or LLM-agent product experience</li><br/><li>Experience at profitable or capital-efficient companies; we are not a "raise and burn" shop</li><br/></ul><br/>Benefits<br/><ul><br/><li>Real ownership of a ~10-engineer team shipping to global shipping operators</li><br/><li>A codebase that does serious work: AI on the customer path, offline PWA syncing event-sourced state from on-vessel installations, computer-vision pipelines on production traffic</li><br/><li>The stability of an international group (UniSea) combined with the speed and ownership of a startup</li><br/><li>Direct exposure to the CTO and CEO; in the room for the calls that matter</li><br/><li>A diverse, international team of maritime experts, engineers, and commercial talent</li><br/><li>Central Berlin office at Münzstraße (Mitte)</li><br/><li>Competitive salary, meaningful equity, modern equipment</li><br/><li>Regular team events, offsites, and a culture that takes itself seriously without being stiff</li><br/></ul><br/><p>We would love to hear from you. Send us your CV plus a short paragraph telling us: (a) the hardest team-management call you have made, (b) a project where you prototyped something and handed it off, and (c) an engineer who grew under you and what they are doing now.</p><br/><p>Our process is fast and respectful of your time: an intro call with the VP Engineering or CTO, a deep technical conversation with the CTO, two team conversations with senior engineers, and a final chat with the CEO. You will hear back from us within a few days at every stage.</p> </div>