Engineering Manager - Data Platform

About the opportunity

We are seeking an experienced and visionary Engineering Manager to lead one of our Data Platform teams, currently undergoing a fundamental transformation from a traditional, service-oriented model into a product-oriented platform team focused on automation, scalability, integration, and developer enablement.

Who we are:

N26 has reimagined banking for today’s digital world. Technology and design empower everything we do and it’s how we are building the global banking platform the world loves to use.

We've eliminated physical branches, paperwork, and hidden fees for an elegant digital experience and supreme savings. Giving people the power to live and bank their way is what gets us out of bed in the morning and inspires the work that we do.

Founded in 2013, N26 now has more than 8 million customers in 24 markets. We are headquartered in Berlin with offices in multiple cities across Europe, including Vienna and Barcelona, and a 1,500-strong team of more than 80 nationalities.

• As Engineering Manager, you will play a pivotal role in accelerating this transition, guiding the team through a challenging but high-potential journey.
• You will be responsible for shaping and executing long-term technical and organizational strategies that enable scalable ownership models across the company, allowing teams to safely and autonomously leverage platform capabilities. Your leadership will be key to evolving a team with strong operational foundations into a high-impact, autonomous group of engineers who deliver reliable and compliant platform solutions, empower development teams, and contribute to the broader platform ecosystem. You will have end to end ownership of the team’s scope, including strategy, execution, and organizational design.This role is an opportunity to shape the future of our Data Platform, defining how teams across the company build, operate, and scale data and AI-driven products in a compliant and reliable way.
• Define and drive the strategic evolution of the team towards building a modern, scalable data platform that enables advanced data and AI use cases by default, without requiring bespoke solutions or direct platform team involvement
• Enable development teams to safely and autonomously leverage data and platform capabilities through robust tooling, guardrails, and well-defined interfaces.
• Establish a long-term roadmap that aligns data platform capabilities with emerging AI use cases, product needs, and regulatory constraints.
• Build and grow a high-performing, cross-functional team capable of delivering reliable, scalable, and compliant platform solutions
• Shape the team’s culture by promoting initiative, critical thinking, technical leadership, and shared responsibility across the platform.
• Coach and develop engineers to strengthen their skills across data, infrastructure, and platform engineering, while raising the bar on ownership and delivery.
• Take a proactive role in performance management, ensuring the team continuously evolves towards autonomy, maturity, and impact.
• Act as a key liaison between Engineering, Product, Security, and other stakeholders to represent the team’s roadmap and priorities.

• Background
• Proven experience leading high-impact engineering teams in a Platform, Infrastructure, SRE, or DevOps context, ideally within regulated, complex technical environments.
• Strong track record in transforming teams, developing both skills and mindset to support long-term strategic goals.
• Experience with public cloud providers, ideally AWS, and an understanding of how cloud-native services impact data architecture and operations
• Skills
• Strong understanding of data platform architectures and the trade-offs involved in building and operating them at scale.
• Familiarity with platform engineering principles and practices, including automation, observability, IaC, and secure-by-default design.
• Strong leadership in people and performance management, with experience coaching engineers and influencing team culture.
• Ability to navigate complex environments, balancing speed, reliability, and risk, with an understanding of regulatory constraints as a plus.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills; able to create alignment across engineering, product, and business.
• Strategic thinker with the ability to translate long-term vision into clear plans and team evolution.
• Full professional proficiency in English
• Traits
• You lead with clarity and purpose, bringing structure and momentum to complex transformations.
• You are proactive, decisive, and comfortable making hard calls when needed.
• You empower individuals and teams, holding high standards while creating a supportive environment.
• You have a strong sense of accountability and inspire it in others.
• You are able to influence teams and stakeholders across the organization to align on shared goals, without relying on formal authority.
• You value long-term sustainability over short-term fixes, and seek scalable, systemic solutions.