About this role
Location: Come and join us in Barcelona!
We are looking for a talented and motivated Engineering Manager to lead our new Driver Onboarding team. As the leader of this highly skilled, cross-functional team—comprising Fullstack Engineers, Backend Engineers, a Product Manager, a Product Designer, a Data Analyst, and yourself—you will shape the future of mobility with FREENOW.
Responsibilities
- Designing and implementing the entire driver registration and onboarding journey, making it simple, intuitive, and fast.
- Developing and maintaining robust, automated document validation systems to ensure compliance and quick approval for drivers.
- Building user-centric interfaces for the driver portal using React, ensuring a seamless and high-performance experience.
- Optimizing process automation within the document lifecycle in close collaboration with Operations.
- Empowering drivers through self-service tools to manage their accounts and documentation.
- Fostering collaboration across teams to integrate key insights and improve the overall driver experience.
- Mentoring & Coaching: Actively supporting the professional development of your engineers, providing regular feedback, and helping them achieve their career goals.
- Team Building & Scaling: Owning the hiring process to scale the team, ensuring a healthy balance of skills, and fostering a diverse, inclusive, and inspiring team culture.
- Career Pathing: Defining growth opportunities for team members, conducting performance reviews, and building a roadmap for individual and collective success.
- Culture Champion: Promoting a healthy work-life balance and a high-trust environment where engineers feel empowered to take risks and learn from failures.
- Ownership & Accountability: Cultivating a culture where engineers "Own the Feature, Own the Code," feeling responsible for everything from ideation to monitoring.
- System Excellence: Overseeing the design of high-scale solutions across the full stack—from Kotlin/Java backend services to state-of-the-art React frontends.
- Operational Health: Guiding the team to identify bottlenecks, improve performance (DB access, cache, messaging), and maintain a state-of-the-art codebase.
- Agile Mentorship: Leading and living agile ceremonies while ensuring the team works together effectively in an Agile environment (Scrum/Kanban).
Requirements
- Strategic Alignment: Working closely with Product and Design to translate business requirements into technical roadmaps.
- Proven Experience: Significant experience leading engineering teams, with a focus on people management, talent development, and scaling high-performing squads.
- Growth Mindset: Passionate about building teams and helping individuals grow their technical and soft skills.
- Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, with the ability to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Backend Expertise: Professional experience with Kotlin or Java and the Spring Boot framework.
- Frontend Literacy: Familiarity with React and the modern JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystem.
- Architectural Knowledge: Deep understanding of microservices architecture, RESTful APIs, and scalable web application principles.
- Infrastructure & Monitoring: Experience with messaging systems (Kafka/RabbitMQ) and monitoring tools (Grafana, Datadog, or Kibana).
- Hands-on experience with AWS or similar cloud providers.
- Expertise in document automation validation processes.
- Experience navigating fast-paced, high-growth environments.
- Experience leading teams developing or integrating AI-driven products and Large Language Models (LLMs).
- Familiarity with Python and its ecosystem.
Nice to have
- Hands-on experience with AWS or similar cloud providers.
- Expertise in document automation validation processes.
- Experience navigating fast-paced, high-growth environments.
- Experience leading teams developing or integrating AI-driven products and Large Language Models (LLMs).
- Familiarity with Python and its ecosystem.
- BENEFITS & PERKS IN A NUTSHELL:
- Flexible working arrangements
- LinkedIn Learning
- Sabbatical & special leave policies
- WeRoad partnership
- Birthday, 24th + 31st December off
- Short term EU work policy
- Mobility Credit
- Health Insurance
- Employee assistance program
- DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION:
- FREE NOW is an equal opportunity employer and we consider qualified applicants regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or age.
- We want you to grow and evolve, bring your true self to work.
- SEE WHAT OUR AWESOME COLLEAGUES SAY ABOUT US:
About FREENOW
We are Freenow, the European taxi app with the broadest multi-mobility offering, available in 9 markets and over 180 cities. Our app gives millions of passengers the freedom to move with a wide choice of services including taxis, private hire vehicles, carsharing, car rental, e-scooters, e-bikes, e-mopeds and public transport. Headquartered in Hamburg and led by our CEO Thomas Zimmermann, we are on a mission to make urban mobility more efficient, sustainable and inclusive. Since July 2025 we have been part of Lyft, a global mobility platform connecting riders and drivers for billions of rides across North America and Europe. Together we are building a more caring and connected world, creating new opportunities for innovation, growth and impact.