Lead Backend Engineer

About Tonsser

Tonsser is on a mission to redefine youth sports. Hundreds of thousands of young athletes across Europe already use Tonsser to track their performance, get discovered, and feel part of something bigger than the next match. We're now starting our most ambitious chapter yet, a new project that will reshape an entire category, and we're looking for a Lead Backend Engineer to help us build it.

The Role

You'll own the architecture of the Tonsser platform as we move into this next phase. That means making the foundational technical decisions for a product used by a generation of athletes and setting the bar for how a small, ambitious team builds in 2026.

This is a hands-on lead role. You'll write code, shape the system, and set the technical direction. You'll also help us level up as a team, particularly around how we adopt AI as a core part of how we build and what we ship.

What you'll do

• Lead the architectural direction of our backend platform as we evolve from where we are today toward what's next
• Drive the technical roadmap for our new flagship project
• Set the standard for how the team works with AI, both in our development workflow and as a product capability
• Ship production code, review PRs, and mentor the engineers around you
• Partner closely with product, mobile, and design to turn ambitious ideas into things that actually work at scale
• Make pragmatic calls about what to keep, what to evolve, and what to rebuild

Our current stack

• Ruby monolith with a GraphQL API
• SQL (PostgreSQL)
• Hosted on Heroku
• Native iOS and Android apps, with the ambition to move to Kotlin Multiplatform

We're not dogmatic about the stack, we're looking for someone who can help us decide what stays, what changes, and what comes next.

What we're looking for

• Significant experience as a senior or lead backend engineer, ideally with time spent owning architecture decisions in a production environment
• Deep comfort with at least one of Ruby, Python, Elixir, Go, or a similar modern backend language, and the judgement to know when language choice matters and when it doesn't
• Strong opinions on API design, data modelling, and system evolution
• Hands-on experience integrating AI/LLM capabilities into real products, or a strong, demonstrable interest in doing so
• Experience leading or mentoring other engineers
• Comfortable working remotely across European timezones
• Bonus: experience with consumer-scale mobile backends, GraphQL, or Kotlin Multiplatform

The shape of the role

• Location: Remote, anywhere in Europe
• Engagement: Open to starting as a freelance contract, with the clear intention of moving to a permanent role
• Compensation: €80,000–€90,000, with flexibility based on experience

How to apply

Send us a short note about what you've built, what you're looking for next, and why this caught your eye. We read every application.

€80,000 - €90,000 a year