Lead Architect and People Lead

🚀 Build the Future of Global Work - From Anywhere

At WorkFlex, we don’t just "allow" remote work, we enable it for the world. We are building the automated operating system for international travel compliance, tax, and duty of care.

The Lifestyle: We are a remote-only company. You can work from anywhere and take up to 183 days of workations per year. We value your output and your "Architect’s Mind," not the hours you spend in an IDE or a physical office.

🛠️ The Role: The "Mini-CTO" of your Product

You will lead a high-autonomy, single-threaded team of 4-5 engineers. This is a 50/50 Player-Coach role designed for those who refuse to stop coding but are ready to scale their impact through others.

• The Partnership: You will work in a "dual-leadership" model with a dedicated Product Manager. You own the How (Architecture, Quality, Delivery) while they own the What (Roadmap, User Value). You aren't their boss, they aren't your boss; you are their strategic technical partner.
• The 50/50 Split: You’ll spend half your time as the Lead Architect designing greenfield systems and orchestrating AI agents - and the other half as a People Lead hiring, mentoring, and handling performance/salary growth for your engineers.

🤖 The Way We Work: Agentic & Async

We are not a traditional "code-monkey" shop.

• Agentic Coding: Our workflow is heavily driven by AI agents (Claude, etc.). We rarely open a traditional IDE for boilerplate. We expect you to lead your team in using AI as a high-leverage tool to build scalable, complex systems at 4x speed.
• Deep Work, No Bablah: We operate with a "meeting-light," async-first culture. Aside from essential syncs (Dailies/Planning), we protect your time so you can focus on architecture and leadership.

🎯 What You’ll Do

• Architectural Sovereignty: Own the technical vision for your product domain. Make the high-stakes decisions on scalability and system design.
• Force Multiplication: Mentor 4-5 engineers to help them reach their full potential. You'll handle the "heavy lifting" of management: performance reviews, career coaching, and salary negotiations.
• End-to-End Ownership: Your team owns the full lifecycle from the first line of an AI prompt to the final deployment and operation.

⭐ What you need to succeed

• The Lead Experience: 1-2+ years of experience in people management (managing performance, growth, and team health).
• Technical Battle Scars: 5+ years in Java, Spring Boot, and Angular/TypeScript. You need deep foundational knowledge to audit and guide AI-generated architectures. We do not want AI slop in our codebases.

Browse our curated collection of remote jobs across all categories and industries, featuring positions from top companies worldwide.

• AI-First Mindset: You are excited by the prospect of "IDE-light" development and know how to delegate to agents without losing quality.
• Remote Fluency: You are a master of async communication and know how to foster a team culture across different time zones.

If you don't possess all the required skills and experiences but feel passionate about this role, don't hesitate to apply. We value ambition and a willingness to learn, and we're happy to discuss your candidacy for this position!

🚀 Why join us at WorkFlex

• Contribute to building the future of the fastest-growing HR Tech start-up in Germany backed by prominent customers such as Scout24, Vodafone, Biontech, and others, as well as funding from top-tier VC and angel investors.
• Competitive salary, dependent on location.
• A monthly budget of €200 to spend on 🏢 co-working space and/or 🏃 ♀️ sports subscriptions.
• VSOPs (Virtual Stock Options) to share in our success.
• Work from anywhere in a remote-only company and go on workations for up to 183 days a year.
• Merit-based culture with substantial growth opportunities.
• Trust-based work – organize your own schedule. We want to celebrate results, not hours spent working.
• Collaborative team culture where everyone's input is valued to shape the sales efforts, approaches, and processes.

#LI-Remote