Backend Technical Lead

Our Team

We believe travel can create citizens of the world. We spark moments of connection and transformation, giving people the freedom to explore openly and shape their own story.

With colleagues from more than 50 countries, our diversity fuels curiosity, insight, and a culture of openness, essential to understanding our travellers and one another.

We work in a flexible hybrid model from our Utrecht HQ and our homes across the Netherlands.

Just as travel is about discovery, we’re looking for people who want to go one stop further, joining a journey that inspires personal transformation through train travel.

We’re on the search for…

…an innovative Backend Lead with a focus on people and practical solutions who can Go One Stop Further.

In this role, you will be accountable for guiding the technical direction of our backend domain, maintaining high engineering standards, and supporting a team of backend developers in their growth and delivery. You will help shape and evolve the backend platform that powers Eurail’s core digital products, including our Pass and Seat reservations, eCommerce and the next generation of travel experiences.

You will work closely with other leads (IT Ops, QA, App, Frontend), our architect, and product teams to ensure that our backend systems remain scalable, secure, reliable, and future-proof.

What you’ll be doing

You’ll join the IT team, reporting to the Head of IT.

You’ll be involved in:

• Leading technical direction & delivery for backend systems and services across the platform.

• Collaborating closely with the Architect on major architectural decisions and owning implementation-level decisions within agreed architectural guidelines.

• Translating architectural vision into executable backend designs and ensuring delivery aligns with business goals.  

• Creating a clear technical vision for backend architecture and ensuring alignment with business goals.

• Supporting architecture decisions around microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, AWS services, and Infrastructure-as-Code.

• Gatekeeping quality standards through code reviews, coding standards, and best practices (security, performance, reliability).

• Ensuring operational excellence, including observability, incident learnings, and improving stability in production.

• Mentoring and coaching backend developers, supporting professional growth and building a culture of ownership.

• Acting as the escalation point for complex technical issues, guiding solutions and coordinating across teams.

• Partnering closely with IT Ops and other Leads on DevSecOps maturity, CI/CD reliability and system resilience.

• Translating product needs into robust technical solutions while keeping scalability and maintainability in mind.

• Continuously improving backend engineering workflows, tooling, and service reliability, feeding platform-level insights back to the Architect 

What we’re looking for

It's already a possible match when you share the same mindset as us, being forward-thinking, results-driven, caring and embracing diversity.

In terms of your experience and skills:

• A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related field.

• 8+ years of backend development experience, depending on demonstrated scope and impact.

• Extensive experience (minimum 5 years) in people management, leading and mentoring backend engineers, and improving team productivity and engineering maturity.

• Extensive experience in Java (17+), Spring Boot, REST APIs, and backend architecture.

• Deep experience with AWS services (serverless, ECS/EKS, DynamoDB, RDS, SQS/SNS, etc.).

• Experience with microservices and event-driven architecture in distributed systems.

• Proficient knowledge of Infrastructure-as-Code (CloudFormation or CDK) and CI/CD pipelines.

• Proficient understanding of Kubernetes, containerised deployments, and service operations.

• Demonstrated ownership of service lifecycle, including monitoring and production stability.

• An in-depth grasp of security-by-design principles, DevSecOps, and compliance awareness (privacy, security, accessibility).

• Ensuring effective alignment with mobile and frontend teams on API contracts, data models, and shared technical decisions.

• Effective communication skills in English (both oral and written), able to explain complex technical topics clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• A structured, improvement-driven mindset and the ability to make sound engineering decisions.

In addition, it’s extra credit if you have…

• Experience in a B2C or B2B eCommerce environment with high availability requirements.

• Experience working with architects and other leads in larger technical ecosystems.

• Familiarity with domain-driven design, API versioning strategies and backward compatibility practices.

• An interest in sustainable travel.

Our offer

• We offer a flexible hybrid model that combines remote work with in-office days each week, enhancing teamwork and connection.

• A complimentary NS train card to travel across the Netherlands for work and leisure.

• An annual free Interrail/Eurail travel pass for you and a companion, so you can explore Europe and share the same experiences as our customers.

• Unlimited access to OpenUp for lifestyle & well-being recommendations.

• Support for your well-being through a personal allowance of €1500.

• We provide a training allowance of €4000 to support learning opportunities relevant to your role.

• Variable annual bonus (target 4%), based on company and individual performance.

• An annual team trip across Europe to experience our product first-hand.

• 20 working days per year from abroad.

• An annual leave package of 28 days, plus study days, volunteer days, and a culture day.

• Salary Scale: 61, Monthly gross salary (excluding 8% allowance): €6500 - 7800 (full-time) based on experience.

 Curious to apply?

Apply directly via our website (https://jobs.eurail.com/en/vacancies).

• We'll ask you to share your resume in English (our business language) and tell us why you're interested in Eurail and this particular role. It doesn't hurt to be creative; we enjoy seeing your personality shine through.

• As part of the process, we may also ask you to complete a short assessment to showcase your skills.

If we think you might be a good candidate, the next step is a relatively informal interview. For you, this is a chance to understand if Eurail is your ideal workplace, and for us, it tells us more about the value you would bring.

To support fair and unbiased hiring, we use a blind recruitment process in the early stages. Personal details such as your name, date of birth, photo, contact information, social media links, gender, and nationality are hidden, allowing us to focus on your skills, experience, and potential.

In the meantime…

If you’re curious, why not check us out on LinkedIn and get a sense of our culture and values?

Got questions? Our People & Culture team would be happy to help — just drop us a note at jobs@eurail.com. We don’t use LinkedIn for messages, so this is the best way to reach us!

While you're here, explore our travel passes and get inspired for your next journey at www.eurail.com.