Software Engineering Team Lead R&D

We are looking for a Team Lead with affinity for Front-end development with a startup mindset. You turn early ideas into products with your team that solve real problems, test and learn fast, and balance technical investments with business impact.  

Studyportals Headquarters is in Strijp-S, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Flexibility to work hybrid from our office in Eindhoven.

About Studyportals. 

We change the lives of millions of students and leave the world a bit brighter than we found it. Every minute 100 students around the world trust our platforms (e.g., ) to find their best matching education for free. At the same time, we help educators diversify their (international) student population and reduce dropouts. 

With forty different nationalities among the 150 people working at Studyportals, we are an international bunch of people. Eager to learn and serious about fun. Want to know more?

Why are we searching for you? 

We want to strengthen our ability to innovate and win in the era of AI. Studyportals has a strong pipeline of strategic ideas that we are prioritizing as investments. Your role is to lead a new R&D team and ensure we have a strong Engineering culture that drives innovation at speed by utilizing modern practices, cutting-edge technology (e.g. AI) and individual growth. You will help us to turn the most promising initiatives into products that drive impact and profitability with your leadership skills. 

What are your three main goals? 

• Build a high-performing, hands-on engineering team that turns early-stage ideas into validated, impactful product prototypes. 
• Drive experimentation and rapid development using modern engineering practices, AI technologies, and scalable architecture. 
• Establish the processes, culture, and standards that enable sustainable innovation and long-term product growth. 

What does your team look like? 

You will report to Stefan, the Head of Engineering, and lead a new R&D development team focused on new product initiatives that are currently being formed. You will collaborate closely with the Product Owner of the team; the other Team Leads and other Engineers. Together with them, you will turn early concepts into products that deliver value for students and partners with your team by building high-quality products by combining speed with quality and impact. 

What are your responsibilities and tasks? 

• Explore and validate strategic ideas through research, discovery, and experimentation. 
• Lead by example through your actions and demonstrate leadership through hands-on coding. You will manage and grow your team members. You provide pragmatic guidance, to encourage future-proof technical decisions and align them with the other feature teams. As a Team Lead you thrive on dedicating at least 80% of your time to software development, actively contributing to delivering user value. 
• Help us to become more scalable as a platform, by decoupling our dependencies and driving our microservice architecture. Staying in control of quality is key 
• Build the foundation of Studyportals' R&D function, helping the company innovate and grow profitably. 

• You have at least 2 years of experience leading a cross-functional engineering team. Agile and Scrum practices are your secret superpower. You will be leading the Scrum practices within the team 
• You lead by example: mentoring your team to grow while staying hands-on as an engineer. 
• You have at least 6 years of working experience as a (senior) Front-end engineer in building applications in JavaScript component-based frameworks (e.g., VueJS, React or Angular). Modern JavaScript, TypeScript, NPM and Webpack. 
• HTML5 and SCSS/CSS3 are second nature to you, and you care about performance, accessibility, and responsive design. 
• Experience with (different types of) automated testing as part of CI/CD driven software development. 
• You write clean, modular, and maintainable code, following SOLID and modern software design principles. 
• Proven record in building, launching, and scaling profitable digital products from scratch. 
• You enjoy working in an agile environment and you are excellent at giving and receiving feedback (frequently). 
• You work closely with stakeholders and product owners to balance innovation, quality, and speed of delivery. 

• Competitive salary including a bonus and pension.
• 32 vacation days (including bank holidays) you have the flexibility to take your holidays whenever you want (e.g., be off on Chinese New Year instead of King's Day)
• Reimbursement of your work-related travel costs.
• Flexibility to work remotely 3 days per week, including a remote working allowance.
• Possibility to work from abroad 2 times a year.
• An annual personal development budget because personal growth is KEY
• A nice and fun office in the heart of Eindhoven; five minutes' walk away from the station