Principal software engineer Jobs in Berlin

Shine is the financial copilot for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Founded by serial entrepreneurs Rico Andersen and Martin Hegelund, Shine is a leading European fintech unicorn on a mission to restore the joy of running a business, by ending wasted time on financial admin. Shine offers a connected solution for invoicing, accounting, payroll, business accounts, payments, and financing, meaning business owners can focus their energy on growing a healthy business, not held back by manual admin.

Part of something bigger
Today we're part of Cegid, a European leader in cloud software for finance and accounting. Together we're building Europe's leading financial copilot for small businesses and their accountants.
Shine already supports more than 400,000 small businesses. As part of Cegid, we now reach over one million small businesses and 15,000 accountants across Europe.
We're a multicultural team working from France, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, contributing to a wider European network that spans Spain, Portugal and Belgium.

Your hiring experience matters
Just as we respect our customers' time, we respect yours. Your experience with Shine and Cegid should feel simple, transparent and genuinely supportive.
If this sounds like somewhere you want to grow, we'd love to hear from you.

Your Role as a Staff Engineer

About the Role

We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to provide technical leadership within a product engineering team while remaining deeply hands-on. This is a role for someone who enjoys solving complex engineering challenges, shaping technical direction, and building high-quality software alongside the team.

You'll influence architecture, establish engineering standards, mentor other engineers, and own the long-term technical health of our platform. While you'll lead technically, this is not a people management role—your impact comes through engineering excellence, collaboration, and technical decision-making.

The majority of your time will be spent designing, building, and shipping software.

What You'll Do

• Lead the technical direction of a product area, balancing immediate delivery with long-term platform health.

• Design and build scalable event-driven systems and microservices.

• Own the architecture, design, and evolution of REST APIs.

• Make pragmatic architecture decisions that support growth, maintainability, and reliability.

• Develop primarily in TypeScript (Node.js), writing clean, well-tested, production-ready code.

• Drive engineering best practices through code reviews, technical standards, and mentoring.

• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and Engineering to deliver customer value.

• Champion software quality, observability, performance, and operational excellence.

• Use modern AI-assisted engineering tools to improve productivity across coding, debugging, testing, and design.

• Continuously evaluate new technologies and practices that improve developer experience and product quality.

What We're Looking For

Required

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.

• Experience providing technical leadership without direct people management responsibilities.

• Strong experience with TypeScript (Node.js/JavaScript also considered).

• Experience designing and building event-driven architectures and microservices.

• Strong understanding of REST API design, ownership, and lifecycle management.

• Experience building and operating applications on AWS.

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions.

• Demonstrated ability to make architecture decisions and take long-term ownership of technical solutions.

• Passion for code quality through testing, reviews, engineering standards, and mentoring.

• Genuine interest in financial, accounting, or business software domains.

• Enthusiastic adopter of AI engineering tools, with practical experience using AI in day-to-day software development.

Nice to Have

• Experience with NestJS.

• Knowledge of Domain-Driven Design (DDD).

• Experience in fintech or accounting software.

• Strong opinions on the role of AI in software engineering, backed by practical experimentation.

• Full-stack experience, with confidence contributing across both frontend and backend.

Team & Ways of Working

You'll join a collaborative product engineering team of 5–8 engineers with a mix of experience levels across the Shine hubs.

This is a highly collaborative environment where technical leadership is shared, ideas are encouraged, and engineers are trusted to make meaningful technical decisions. The role is intentionally hands-on, with the majority of your time spent writing code and delivering customer value.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, you'll:

• Build scalable, maintainable systems that stand the test of time.

• Raise the engineering capability of those around you through mentorship and technical leadership.

• Help shape architectural decisions that enable the business to grow.

• Foster a culture of quality, ownership, and continuous improvement.

• Demonstrate how AI can be effectively integrated into modern software engineering workflows without compromising quality or craftsmanship.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We follow the principle of equal treatment to consider all job applicants and do not discriminate based on their gender, sexual orientation, color, racial or ethnic origin, religion, disability, etc. as per applicable law.

Our recruitment process

1️⃣ A 30' first call with Sam Parry=Talent Acquisition to get to know you better and share more about Shine

2️⃣ A 45' interview with the hiring team to discuss your past experiences and the role we are offering.

4️⃣ A 30' team introduction, followed by a soft skills interview to see how we can best support your growth at Shine.