Freelance Senior Software Engineer

About the company

Packaging is a market worth several hundred billion euros, and new EU rules such as PPWR, EPR and EUDR are forcing companies to rethink how they manage it. Our client started with a digital platform for packaging procurement, connecting companies with a Europe-wide supplier network. Its newer product is an end-to-end SaaS platform for packaging management. Companies bring in their packaging data and see how ready they are for current and upcoming regulation, and what needs to change.

The company is based in Berlin and backed by leading European investors, with a €15M Series A.

The role

This is a freelance, team-augmentation role on the company’s newer product. You’ll be a full member of the engineering team, working in a small squad alongside Product and Design and reporting to the VP Technology. You’ll own projects from framing the problem through to running them in production. You’ll also help the engineers around you get better.

It suits a hands-on senior engineer who asks “why” before “how” and likes a young product with plenty still to shape. It’s not a pure architect role.

What you’ll be doing

• Own technical projects end to end, from design and implementation to rollout and production
• Make design calls on data models, API design and tooling, at feature level and across the system
• Work with Product and Design on the right solution, and challenge requirements when there’s a better way
• Spot risks early and make the case for fixing them
• Pair program, give code reviews that teach, and mentor mid-level engineers

What you’ll need

• 5+ years building and running production software, ideally at a growing SaaS company
• Strong TypeScript and Node.js; strong in either NestJS or React and comfortable in the other
• APIs and system boundaries you’ve designed that held up under real usage
• Deployment, testing, CI/CD and observability treated as part of the job
• A track record of mentoring engineers
• Comfortable with AI coding tools, without lowering the quality bar
• Fluent English; German is a plus