Engineering Manager – Auctions (m/w/d)
CarOnSale
Salary undisclosed
Need a reasonable accommodation to apply or interview? Contact us.
JobMinglr uses automated technology to recommend jobs based on profile information and job preferences. Match Score does not determine eligibility for a position, prevent a user from viewing or applying to a job, or make hiring decisions on behalf of an employer.
Description
Thousands of dealers bid on our platform, and every bid runs through the system your team owns. Real-time auctions, every selling modality, seven engineers from mid-level to staff, and a dedicated Product Manager. You decide where it goes next.
Location: Central Berlin – hybrid, with 3 days in our office and 2 days from home.
About us
CarOnSale is the AI-powered platform for B2B used car trading in Europe. Over 40,000 buyers from more than 20 countries trade on our platform — and 85% of inventory is exclusive to us. We connect software, pricing intelligence, logistics and financing in one layer — as the operating system for an entire industry.
One Platform. One Profit Engine.
What you'll do
- You lead the TRX team: real-time auctioning and the selling modalities at the core of our platform. Seven engineers across backend, web and mobile, working with a dedicated Product Manager, across European and Brazilian time zones.
- You own the team's technical direction. You set the strategy for the auction domain, tie it to OKRs, and make the architecture calls with the team.
- You own delivery and quality. You run the delivery method, decide which testing layers carry which risks, and make sure what ships holds up under live auctions.
- You own the team's technical metrics: what is tracked, what alerts, and what happens when it fires.
- You build the team. You hire, level, grow, and when needed, manage people out.
- You run the people processes: onboarding, growth plans, a regular feedback cadence, and mentoring across levels.
- You balance product and engineering. You say no to engineering work in business terms and no to product work in risk terms, and you can defend the call either way.
- You push AI adoption in the team and use AI tooling in your own work.
What you bring
- 8+ years as a software engineer in individual contributor roles before moving into management. You don't need to code day to day, but you have coded heavily and still think in architecture and design.
- 2+ years managing engineers as their line manager, with performance and hiring responsibility. Tech lead time does not count here.
- Depth in distributed systems: services, concurrency, data consistency.
- A team you assembled yourself, not only one you inherited: people you hired, levelled and grew.
- A delivery methodology you have run, whether Scrum, Kanban or one you shaped, plus a clear view of testing layers and how to apply them.
- A technical strategy you owned for a team or a domain, tied to OKRs or another form of technical governance.
- An AI-first way of working: you use tools like Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot every day and have driven adoption in a team.
- English at C1 level or above — it is our working language.
Nice to have
- Real-time or event-driven systems under real load
- Object-oriented and domain-driven design
- Experience under more than one delivery methodology, and a view on how they compare
- A team taken through a monolith-to-services migration or its aftermath, or a team you stabilised
- Managing a team distributed across time zones
- A background in marketplaces, auctions, automotive, payments or trading
- Our stack: TypeScript and NestJS, RabbitMQ, PostgreSQL, Heroku, Angular on web, Flutter on mobile
- German
What we offer
- Hybrid working: 3 days in office, 2 days remote – plus 25 "Work from Anywhere" days per year
- 28 days annual leave
- 2× annual career & development conversations
- Company pension with 20% employer contribution
- Fully paid Deutschlandticket (public transport)
- FitX membership or Urban Sports Club subsidy
- Virtual stock options — share in the upside
- Modern IT setup for your day-to-day work
- Structured onboarding with buddy programme and social events
- Lived diversity: active women's network, meditation & prayer room
Apply now — your CV is enough.
Benefits
- Hybrid working: 3 days in office, 2 days remote – plus 25 "Work from Anywhere" days per year
- 28 days annual leave
- 2× annual career & development conversations
- Company pension with 20% employer contribution
- Fully paid Deutschlandticket (public transport)
- FitX membership or Urban Sports Club subsidy
- Virtual stock options — share in the upside
- Modern IT setup for your day-to-day work
- Structured onboarding with buddy programme and social events
- Lived diversity: active women's network, meditation & prayer room
About this role
Leading CarOnSale's TRX team means owning the real-time auction system that processes thousands of dealer bids across the platform. You'll manage seven engineers spanning backend, web, and mobile, working alongside a dedicated Product Manager across European and Brazilian time zones. This is a hands-on technical leadership role: you set the team's architectural direction, define the strategy for the auction domain tied to business OKRs, and make the calls on what ships and how it's tested under live load. You also build the team itself—hiring, leveling engineers, running feedback cycles, and managing performance.
The role demands someone with 8+ years as an individual contributor who has spent at least 2 years managing engineers with real hiring and performance responsibility. You need depth in distributed systems, a track record of assembling and growing a team you hired yourself, and hands-on experience running a delivery methodology with a clear view of testing layers. You should own a technical strategy you've shaped before, and you need to be fluent with AI tooling—Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot—using them daily and driving adoption in your team. C1-level English is required.
CarOnSale offers hybrid work (3 days Berlin office, 2 remote, plus 25 work-from-anywhere days), 28 days leave, a 20% employer pension contribution, public transport covered, and virtual stock options. Experience with real-time systems, event-driven architecture, marketplace or auction platforms, or time-zone distributed teams would strengthen your candidacy.
How this employer is doing
solid
- Recently Raised Funding
In the news
This role's local market on JobMinglr
Pay for this role
The employer didn't post a pay range for this role. That usually means pay is set in negotiation, which favors whoever arrives with numbers. Check ranges on comparable Engineering Manager – Auctions (m/w/d) postings in Berlin, and analyze any offer before you accept it.
Before you apply, worth reading
How JobMinglr reads this job
Every listing here is scored against your profile before you apply: skills overlap, experience level, location and work arrangement, each weighted and explained. You see the score and the reasons, not just a list. How the matching works.