Axel Springer is Europe's leading digital publisher and a global media and technology company headquartered in Berlin. With renowned brands such as BILD, POLITICO Germany, WELT und BUSINESS INSIDER Germany, we reach millions of users worldwide. We combine the reach of an established industry leader with the agility of a startup, constantly driving innovation to transform journalism for the digital age.

Our corporate strategy places AI at the center: "Digital is the new print. AI is the new digital." This vision reflects our belief that the fusion of artificial intelligence and human creativity will shape the future of media. Our National Media & Tech division is the central tech hub that ensures our journalism is supported by state-of-the-art technology, positioning our brands to thrive in the digital age. We believe in the future of journalism as a business model and invest in forward-looking technologies. Our five essentials are the values that unite us and guide us in our commitment to freedom.

You will lead a data engineering team both technically and as a people manager. You set the technical direction, raise the engineering bar, and stay hands-on enough to guide architecture and delivery - while also helping engineers grow and thrive through coaching, feedback, and clear expectations. You will also build up the data engineering team over time: hiring, strengthening capabilities, and developing future technical leaders. 

• design, develop, and operate large-scale, distributed data systems that power media and advertising products end to end
• own the full lifecycle of core data systems, covering architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, operations, and long-term evolution
• define and continuously evolve data models, pipelines, and APIs to ensure reliable, high-quality data delivery across use cases
• drive platform reliability and performance through observability, SLAs and SLOs, incident response, capacity planning, and cost-aware optimization
• partner closely with engineers, data scientists, product teams, and domain owners to align on requirements and ensure technical excellence
• lead by example and raise engineering standards through hands-on guidance, technical reviews, mentoring, and visible decision-making
• lead and develop engineers as a people manager through 1:1s, feedback, growth plans, hiring, onboarding, and timely performance decisions
• build and scale a healthy data engineering organization by strengthening skills, roles, team culture, and future technical leadership

• proven experience in data engineering and distributed systems, operating production environments at scale
• expertise in designing data platforms (batch/streaming), data modeling, and performance optimization
• strong programming skills in at least one modern language used for data engineering (e.g., Python, Java, Scala, Go)
• experience with cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and modern platform practices (CI/CD; Infrastructure as Code is a plus)
• people leadership experience like coaching, feedback, hiring, and creating clarity or strong readiness to step into it 
• ability to set technical direction and mentor engineers without creating bottlenecks
• excellent communication and collaboration skills across disciplines (engineering, data science, product, editorial) 
• comfortable working with ambiguity and multiple stakeholders in a matrix organization 

• your personal growth is important to us: we offer trainings and learning lunches, tech conferences, a budget for workshops and much more to expand your knowledge and your skills
• flexible working hours support a healthy work-life balance
• our free food offer: in addition to a breakfast snack, we also offer a free lunch in our canteens
• 30 days vacation plus 10 days working from abroad
• free choice of top-notch office equipment (also for your remote work space and private usage), up-to-date hardware, software and modern office spaces that provide you with maximum flexibility - no matter where you are working
• we offer guidance on the administrative side of relocation and visa processes through our relocation agency
• collaboration thrives on direct exchange - we rely on 80% office presence and 20% mobile working
• from now a permanent full- or part-time position in a modern office in the heart of Berlin: http://www.axelspringer-neubau.de/

The most frequently asked questions and their answers can be found on our FAQ page: career.axelspringer.com/en/faq

Diversity is an essential part of our corporate culture! We are looking forward to receiving all applications regardless of gender, nationality, ethnic and social origin, religion, ideology, disability, age, sexual orientation and identity.

You can find information about the representation for the severely disabled at Axel Springer here: https://career.axelspringer.com/en/rsde