At Tower, we’re fixing one of the biggest headaches in data. Most fast-growing companies end up building their data stack twice: once quickly, and again later when it all falls apart. We’re making it possible for small data teams to build reliable data systems that rival what the bigger teams are running.

We’re a small, experienced team backed by leading VCs, and we care about helping businesses turn their data into a real strategic advantage. Instead of quick fixes and expensive rebuilds, our customers get an open data lakehouse that grows with them.

We’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help define and execute the technical strategy of Tower. In this role, you'll work directly with our CTO to shape the architectural foundation of the platform, drive cross-cutting technical initiatives, and mentor engineers across the team. You’ll help us make the hardest technical decisions—balancing performance, scalability, developer experience, and time-to-market as we scale our infrastructure and product offerings.

This is a high-impact, high-trust role for someone who thrives on solving deep technical challenges and has a strong point of view on building robust, elegant systems that last. You’ll have broad influence across the company and play a key role in ensuring that Tower’s technology scales with our ambitions.

• Collaborate closely with the CTO to define and evolve the overall technical strategy for Tower’s compute and control plane.
• Drive architectural decisions across major product surfaces—including runtime infrastructure, orchestration systems, developer tools, and the data plane.
• As this is a coding-focused role, lead by example in coding and setting the standard for engineering excellence across the team.
• Identify technical risks and design for change—building systems that scale with both customer demand and company growth.
• Guide and mentor engineers across the whole stack, helping them grow and raising the technical bar company-wide.
• Partner with product, design, and engineering leadership to ensure alignment between roadmap goals and technical strategy.

• Significant proven experience in software engineering, with a track record of owning complex system design and driving architecture across teams.
• Deep expertise in building distributed systems and infrastructure, particularly for data-intensive or cloud-native applications.
• Proficiency in multiple programming languages across multiple paradigms. We typically work in Golang, Rust, TypeScript, and Python.
• Industry-leading expertise working on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Strategic mindset, meaning you’re comfortable thinking several steps ahead and designing systems that adapt over time.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to translate technical complexity into clear, actionable decisions.
• Experience mentoring engineers and influencing without authority across an organization.

• Experience scaling infrastructure at a high-growth startup or on a developer platform team.
• Familiarity with data infrastructure (e.g. Iceberg, Spark, dbt, Airflow) and modern orchestration patterns.
• Experience defining internal platform APIs and building multi-tenant architectures.
• Background in technical leadership or staff+ engineering roles.

• Partner directly with the CTO to shape the future of a cutting-edge data and AI platform.
• Influence the technical direction of a fast-growing company at an early stage.
• Work on some of the most challenging and high-leverage systems problems in the modern data stack.
• Competitive compensation and significant equity in a high-growth startup.

Send your resume and a brief introduction to [email protected] to connect with a founder and discuss the opportunity!

Location: Berlin, Germany