Lead Backend Engineer

As a Lead Backend Engineer you’ll be a key force in shaping Donna, our perfect AI-sales assistant for field sales reps. Donna empowers them to focus on what they do best - selling.

You’ll be both a builder and a leader: setting the technical direction for one of our core teams, solving hard architectural challenges, and helping the team deliver at a high level. This is a hands-on role — you’ll still write code, but you’ll also coach, unblock, and mentor other engineers so they can do their best work.

You’ll join our ambitious Donna team as one of the early hires. This means you’ll have the opportunity to shape not just the codebase, but also the culture, processes, and team dynamics. If you’re ready to take ownership, lead from the front, and make a significant impact in a growing team with global ambitions, Donna is the place for you.

What you’ll be doing

A non-exhaustive list of features we could use your help with:

• Design and implement the overall architecture of our applications and integrations - keeping them scalable, maintainable, and performant.

• Champion technical excellence by defining coding standards, driving design reviews, and making key architectural decisions.

• Lead by example - take ownership of complex features, write production-grade code, and help unblock teammates when needed.

• Guide and coordinate the team’s work - break down big initiatives into small, well-prioritized tasks, run stand-ups, and ensure focus on outcomes.

• Mentor and grow engineers - provide thoughtful code reviews, share best practices, and help your teammates level up technically.

• Maintain and scale our data integrations and voice-to-voice pipeline - ensuring our existing data sources stay reliable and performant, while making both the data layer and the voice pipeline scale smoothly with our growing customer base and low-latency requirements.

• Experiment with new technologies and drive innovation to keep our stack modern and efficient.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Design, and other leads to refine requirements and make pragmatic trade-offs that maximize value and minimize complexity.

• Own outcomes - measure and iterate on what your team delivers to maximize customer impact.

• Experience: 6+ years building backend or full-stack applications, with at least 1–2 years in a team lead / tech lead capacity.

• Tech fluency: Strong in TypeScript, Node.js, and AWS. Experience with frameworks like Remix or Next.js is a plus.

• Architectural depth: You enjoy thinking in systems, designing data flows, and making decisions that stand the test of time.

• People leadership: You’ve mentored peers, facilitated technical discussions, and helped grow engineering culture.

• Startup mindset: You’re pragmatic, comfortable with trade-offs, and willing to ship quickly to get feedback.

• Data affinity: Our back-end is data-heavy, so experience with data pipelines or architectures is a plus.

• Team presence: Fluency in English and ability to work with us in our Ghent office on weekly basis.

What you can expect

• Impact: Be part of an early-stage rocket ship startup where your contributions directly shape the company’s success. We’re moving fast, with crazy clients already signing up, so every decision you make or line of code you write has immediate impact.

• Growth: Learn from seasoned entrepreneurs and a fast-scaling environment. You’ll build a team and see it grow under your leadership.

• Culture: Join a collaborative and supportive team that values innovation, creativity, and fun.

• Ecosystem: As a part of the Donna team, you’ll become a part of the Ghent tech ecosystem, and a member of the StarApps and Wintercircus ecosystem.

Next to the above very awesome perks, we offer a competitive salary with the following benefits:

• Macbook 💻

• Healthcare benefits plan 🏥

• A membership to the Collective (Wintercircus)

• Meal vouchers 🍴

• Annual company retreat 🎊

• Free office snacks 🍰

• Team drinks and events (like teambuildings, dev days, our off-site hackathons) 🍺🎉

Why Donna?

We’re building something ambitious: an AI-native assistant that integrates naturally into the workflow of salespeople on the move. You’ll join a small, driven team where your work has immediate impact. Our culture values autonomy, pragmatism, and a builder’s mindset.

This role is for builders. If you’re the kind of engineer who still loves shipping great code - and wants to grow alongside a strong technical team - we’d love to hear from you.