Engineering Manager, Driver Onboarding

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.

Your team is the cornerstone of the driver experience, focusing on streamlining the registration flow and ensuring platform integrity through advanced document validation. Your mission is to lead the delivery of a fast, frictionless, and secure onboarding journey for every new driver.

You will guide the team in:

• 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.

YOUR DAILY ADVENTURES WILL INCLUDE:
People Leadership & Growth

• 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.

Technical & Strategic Leadership

• 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).
• Strategic Alignment: Working closely with Product and Design to translate business requirements into technical roadmaps.

TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN THIS ROLE:
Leadership & Management

• 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.

Technical Foundation

• 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).

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.

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