Head of Engineering, nebenan.de
Office located in Kreuzberg, Berlin
Hyperlocal social network for neighbors in Germany
Job no longer available
Hyperlocal social network for neighbors in Germany
101-200 employees
Job no longer available
Office located in Kreuzberg, Berlin
101-200 employees
Company mission
Nebenan.de's mission is to help neighbors to connect with each other in real life.
Role
Who you are
- Senior experience leading engineering organisations through growth, scale, or increased complexity, with clear ownership of delivery and operational excellence
- Proven ability to lead and develop engineering leaders, not just individual contributors
- Strong architectural judgment in evolving, production-grade web platforms, with a deep understanding of reliability, risk, and system behaviour
- Calm, clear, and honest leadership style, comfortable making and defending trade-offs under pressure
- Pragmatic technical mindset: frameworks and languages matter less than sound judgment and system thinking (Ruby on Rails and React experience is a plus)
- Bias towards “boring technology” while open to evaluating and driving new approaches, including AI-enabled tooling and workflows
- Fluent in English; German is a bonus
- You live in Berlin
- Strong alignment with our mission and motivation to help build strong neighbourhoods across Germany
What the job involves
- You are part of the Product & Technology leadership team, reporting directly to the CTPO, and fully accountable for engineering execution across the organisation
- You own delivery predictability end-to-end, ensuring realistic commitments, high-quality outcomes, and continuous improvement
- You establish and continuously evolve the engineering operating system, covering planning, development, release, operations, and incident management
- You balance speed, stability, and technical risk, owning platform reliability, security, and architectural integrity
- You lead, mentor, and scale engineering leadership, enabling teams to operate with clear ownership, accountability, and autonomy
- You support the transition towards value stream–aligned teams and build resilient leadership structures
- You partner closely with Product and Data leadership to shape priorities, timelines, dependencies, and trade-offs
- You create transparency through meaningful signals and metrics, clearly communicating progress, risks, and constraints to leadership
Our take
Whilst neighbors will often bump into each other and exchange some small talk, it can be difficult to build meaningful connections without knowing more about the person. Whilst community groups on social networks such as Facebook provide ways for neighbors to connect more meaningfully, this can also be a toxic environment full of gossip, scams, and advertisement for illegitimate services.
Nebenan.de provides a hyperlocal social network for neighbors in Germany, allowing users to connect with neighbors to sell and give away items, meet up for community events, and generally connect with people nearby. The platform also allows local organizations and companies to join, allowing them to advertise local shops, services, and non-profits.
Whilst social networks such as Nextdoor will present competition to Nebenan.de, the company has taken a unique focus not only on facilitating neighborhood socializing but also to help local businesses, services, and non-profits thrive. Through this approach, the company aims to bring neighborhood communities closer together, filling the gap in the market before companies such as Nextdoor expand to provide services for Germany.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-9% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Mar 2018
$18.9m
SERIES A
Jul 2016
$6.5m
EARLY VC
Total funding: $25.4m
Company benefits
- A growing multidisciplinary design team
- Taking ownership of a specific module of the product
- A young and dynamic environment
- Remote friendly
- SpenditCard
- A strengths-based personal development culture (we work with the Gallup StrengthsFinder)
- A workplace in Berlin-Kreuzberg, in a cheerful team and regular online events like Lunch & Learn and Yoga
- A company pension plan
- You are working CO2-neutrally with us - we plant a tree for every employee joining the company
- A flexible vacation policy - take as much vacation as you need. We also offer the option of a sabbatical
- A meaningful job! We create a great product with real social impact
Company HQ
Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany
Leadership
Christian Vollmann
(Chairman of the Board & Co-Founder)Co-founder and Managing Director of Affinitas GmbH's eDarling from 2009 to 2013. Experience as Founder and CEO of C1 Green Chemicals AG since 2022.
Till Behnke
(Co-Founder)Experience as Co-founder of Oktoberfest7s GmbH since 2017. Founder, CEO, and Chairman of betterplace.org since 2007.
Axumawit Berhe
(CFO & Co-Founder)Head of Finance for Red Onion GmbH from 2008 to 2014. Finance Lead for YND from 2018 to 2020 and for TheDive from 2020 to 2021.
Matthes Scheinhardt
(CSO & Co-Founder)Co-founded Good Hoog GmbH's nebenan.de as CSO in 2015.
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