Backend Team Lead (Java/Spring Boot) - Neon team

We at Holycode are currently looking for a Backend Team Lead (Java/Spring Boot) with strong skills and proven experience who is ready to dive into the Neon project team, for a full-time engagement, to join our company of passionate IT professionals.

About Neon

Neon is a Zurich-based fintech startup on a mission to disrupt the Swiss banking industry and become Switzerland's #1 bank account. With over 250,000 users and a passionate team, we're proud of what we've achieved—and we're ready for the next chapter.

How We Work

• We combine excellent UX/UI with data-driven decision-making
• We focus heavily on automation, CI/CD, and reproducible environments
• We believe in ownership, calculated risks, and always putting the customer first
• We encourage open discussions, technical excellence, and continuous improvement
• Collaboration, respect, support, and social engagement are at the heart of our mighty tech team

A note on this role

We're looking for someone who leads with people first. Technical skill matters, but what we care about most is your ability to grow engineers, build trust, navigate conflict, and create an environment where the team does its best work. If you have solid backend fundamentals and real experience leading a team, we'd rather have that than a purely technical expert without leadership experience.

What You'll Do

• Lead and grow a team of backend engineers — owning mentoring, 1:1s, performance feedback, and career development
• Build trust and psychological safety within the team, and be the person engineers can bring problems to
• Drive planning, prioritization, and delivery in an agile Kanban environment, balancing technical debt with feature velocity
• Represent your team in cross-functional and leadership discussions, aligning with product owners, QA, and platform teams
• Stay hands-on with backend work (Java 21, Spring Boot 3, REST APIs, Kubernetes) where it helps you support the team and stay close to the codebase
• Run code reviews and knowledge-sharing sessions to raise the team's overall bar
• Shape technical direction collaboratively — bringing the team along rather than dictating from the top

Our Tech Stack

• Java 21, Spring Boot 3, JPA/Hibernate, REST APIs
• Angular
• MySQL, PostgreSQL
• Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes

Key Qualifications

• Prior experience as a Team Lead or Engineering Manager — this is a must
• Demonstrated ability to mentor, develop, and grow engineers
• Strong communication skills and comfort navigating team or interpersonal challenges
• Solid experience building production-grade Java applications — you don't need to be the strongest engineer in the room, but you need enough depth to earn technical credibility
• Working knowledge of backend architecture, SQL, REST APIs, and microservices
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps practices
• Fluent in spoken and written English (German or other related languages are a plus)
• Living in Belgrade or willing to come to the office at least 2 days per week (hybrid model)

Why you'll love working here:

• Private health insurance
• Equipment of your choice (laptop, monitor, accessories)
• High-growth company with innovative products
• Supportive, international team
• Budget for professional development (courses, books, conferences)
• English and German language lessons during working hours
• Nice office in Belgrade with a stocked kitchen and game area
• Opportunity to learn, grow, and make a real impact

If you are looking for an environment where you can grow professionally, learn from the best in the field, balance work and life habits and have a pleasant and enthusiastic environment, please submit your CV in English.

#LI-Hybrid