Principal Engineer, Growth Mega Alliance (all genders)

&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Role&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Growth Mega Alliance (GMA) builds the platforms that power how HelloFresh acquires, converts, and retains customers across 18 markets and multiple brands, across five pillars: AdTech, Conversions, Payments, Communications, and Customer Value Optimization (CVO).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As Principal Engineer, you are the technical visionary for these platforms. You define architectural direction across all five pillars, lead the most consequential cross-cutting initiatives, and raise the technical bar for the entire organization. This is a hands-on leadership role - you code, review, and design alongside the senior and staff engineers who look to you as the technical lead.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What You&#39;ll Do&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GenAI &amp;amp; Agentic Engineering Leadership&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Own GMA&#39;s GenAI strategy: identify the highest-leverage opportunities across all five pillars where AI/ML unlocks step-change outcomes, for both engineering productivity and customer-facing capabilities.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Establish agentic development workflows — where specs drive AI-assisted code generation — and scale them from early adopters to standard practice. Build the guardrails and reference architectures that enable squads to work AI-natively.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Develop and articulate a clear point of view on how engineering teams need to evolve in skills, process, and culture to realize the gains that agentic tools make possible.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Growth Platform Architecture&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Own the long-term technical architecture across GMA&#39;s five pillars: real-time personalization, experimentation at scale, AI/ML-driven automation, and cross-pillar data integrity.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Lead the most complex architectural decisions (shared identity schemas, experiment assignment, AdTech-to-Conversions signal loops, payment authorization flows) and drive migrations with large impact.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Ensure GMA platforms integrate cleanly with internal infrastructure and meet reliability, latency, and observability requirements at a global scale.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experimentation &amp;amp; Personalization&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Define GMA&#39;s experimentation strategy and execution framework to optimize experimentation-based decision-making at scale.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Own the data path from customer event to business decision: instrumentation standards, identity resolution, attribution windows, and signal quality.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Strategy &amp;amp; Cross-Alliance Collaboration&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Define GMA&#39;s multi-year technical vision and communicate it with the precision engineers need and the clarity executives can act on. Represent GMA in company-wide programs.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Partner with Intelligent Platforms, Consumer, and Operations Mega Alliances to drive shared architectural standards and prevent fragmentation.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mentorship &amp;amp; Engineering Culture&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Coach and grow Staff and Senior Engineers across all five pillars. Foster engineering excellence through rigorous design review, strong observability practice, and honest post-incident learning.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Champion AI-native development workflows, TDD, DDD, and DevSecOps. Set the written communication standard through your design docs and architectural decision records.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What You&#39;ll Bring&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GenAI &amp;amp; Agentic Engineering&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Practical, hands-on experience with AI coding agents (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode) in production or near-production environments — not just experimentation.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Experience integrating GenAI into customer-facing products or internal business processes at scale, with a clear point of view on the team and cultural changes required to realize the productivity gains.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Growth Domain Expertise&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Deep familiarity with at least two of: AdTech / paid media infrastructure, funnel optimization, payment orchestration, CRM and lifecycle communications, or pricing and incentive optimization.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Fluent in growth domain constraints: PSP behavior, consent and privacy requirements across markets, deliverability limits, attribution windows, and incrementality measurement. Experience in a multi-market subscription or e-commerce business preferred.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Depth&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;~10+ years in software engineering, with ~5+ years at principal level in a high-growth, cloud-native environment.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Expert in distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven patterns (Kafka). Deep AWS experience. Strong proficiency in Go, Kotlin, Python, or TypeScript.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Track record of designing and operating large-scale, multi-region systems. Comfortable doing hands-on architectural reviews and solving critical bottlenecks directly.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Working knowledge of experimentation design and analysis; able to work directly with data (SQL, BI tooling) and trace the full signal chain from instrumentation to business metric.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ways of Working&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Exceptional written communication — your documents make complexity smaller, not larger.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Able to influence without authority; direct, low-ego, and comfortable disagreeing with senior stakeholders while keeping the relationship intact.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Fluent English. German is a bonus.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Success Looks Like&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3 months — &lt;/strong&gt;You have mapped GMA&#39;s critical architectural dependencies and GenAI opportunities, conducted design reviews across multiple pillars, and established a point of view on the highest-leverage technical bets for the year.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6 months — &lt;/strong&gt;Your architectural direction is reflected in roadmaps. GMA&#39;s first AI-native workflows are in production. At least one cross-pillar initiative is running under your technical ownership with clear instrumentation.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;12 months — &lt;/strong&gt;GMA&#39;s platforms are measurably more scalable, observable, and AI-capable. Engineering standards are set and followed. You are the person leaders across HelloTech bring their hardest growth-engineering problems to.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Work With Us&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make an Impact: &lt;/strong&gt;GMA&#39;s platforms touch every customer HelloFresh acquires and every euro it collects. Your decisions move top-line numbers at a company that has changed the way millions of people eat.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Real Scope: &lt;/strong&gt;You own technical direction, make consequential architectural calls, and ship things that matter — at a scale that makes the problems genuinely hard.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AI at the Frontier: &lt;/strong&gt;You will have the mandate, resources, and organizational support to lead AI-native engineering transformation — not advocate for it from the sidelines.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Direct Access: &lt;/strong&gt;You work daily with engineering, product, and business leadership, with the visibility and accountability that implies.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn &amp;amp; Grow: &lt;/strong&gt;Annual learning budget, HelloFresh Academy, and internal mobility across a large, technically ambitious engineering organization.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;<p>Find <a href="https://www.arbeitnow.com">Jobs in Germany</a> on Arbeitnow</a>