Summary

We’re looking for a Principal Architect to own the technical design of HeyCharge’s EV charging platform end-to-end — from embedded firmware and hardware to mobile apps, backend services, and web front ends. You design how features actually work across all of it, then coordinate with the engineers who own each surface to pressure-test feasibility and ship. You’re the person whose designs the team wants to build.

This is a technical-leadership role defined by influence, not authority. You lead because your judgment is trusted and your work is excellent — not because people report to you. You move fluently between BLE firmware, Flutter SDKs, and backend APIs, you prototype the hard parts yourself, and you set the technical direction that keeps reliable EV charging working everywhere — even underground, even offline.

About HeyCharge

HeyCharge makes EV charging work in places it was never supposed to — underground garages, multi-tenant buildings, and any other concrete-and-rebar environment where cellular signal goes to die. Our offline-first SecureCharge platform uses Bluetooth for local session authentication and Zigbee mesh for inter-charger load management and cloud sync. No internet required at the charger; no compromise on reliability or billing accuracy.

We’re Munich-headquartered with team members across Germany, Ukraine, and the US, selling into property managers, utilities, and OEMs across Europe, the US, and Latin America. Our partners include Vonovia (Europe’s largest residential landlord), Easee and Emobi. We’re backed by Y Combinator and EU innovation funding, with a culture that’s Google-rooted on engineering, AI-first and automation-first on operations, and allergic to bureaucracy that doesn’t earn its keep.

Responsibilities

End-to-end design. Own the architecture of features across embedded, hardware, mobile, backend, and web — how the pieces fit, where the hard problems are, and what “done” looks like.
Feasibility with the people who’ll build it. Work with the engineers responsible for each surface to evaluate approaches, de-risk the unknowns, and turn a design into a plan they believe in.
Ship the hard parts. Prototype and build the riskiest, most cross-cutting pieces yourself — you’re in the code, not just the diagram.
Set the technical bar. Establish the patterns, interfaces, and quality standards that hold when hardware is three floors underground with no internet rescue.
Multiply the team. Raise everyone’s game through design reviews, pairing, and example — mentorship by doing, not by managing.
Partner with product. Translate product intent into technical designs that are buildable, reliable, and fast to ship.

Qualifications

Deep software engineering background — you read and write production code fluently across multiple layers of the stack.
Demonstrated fluency across embedded, mobile, backend, and frontend — you can design a feature that spans all of them and be credible with the specialist in each. Generalists beat specialists for this role.
Working familiarity with our stack: C/C++ on the embedded side; TypeScript, Flutter/Dart, Node.js, NestJS, Angular on the application side; Google Cloud on the backend.
Experience with BLE, Zigbee, and wireless SoCs / radio stacks — or the credible ability to learn them fast.
A track record of being the engineer others defer to on hard technical calls — you’ve earned technical authority before, without needing a title to wield it.
Ability to set direction and align other engineers without becoming a bottleneck or a gatekeeper.
Automation-first instincts and a bias toward reliability, scalability, and maintainability.
Experience with physical product development is a strong plus.

Personal Characteristics

Builder mindset — you reach for the keyboard before the slide deck; you create the systems and patterns that make everyone else faster.
Ownership mentality — you take responsibility for what ships, all the way through to deployed reality, across surfaces you don’t personally own.
Automation-first — you instinctively remove repetitive work rather than just doing it faster.
Leads by example — the team follows your designs because they’re good, and your standards because you hold yourself to them first.
Adaptable — you’re comfortable where the right answer this quarter might not be the right answer next.

Who this role is not for

If you want to lead through headcount, org charts, and reporting lines, this isn’t it. This is a technical-leadership role — you lead by designing and shipping, and the team follows the work. We have deliberately reframed this away from a line-management role.
If your reflex is to plan the team before you’ve done the work, this is the wrong environment. You earn followership here by personally shipping what the role demands — firmware, backend, mobile SDKs, all of it — not by delegating it.
If you’ve spent your career in only backend, only embedded, or only mobile, the cross-domain design demand here will exhaust you. We need someone credible across the whole stack on day one.
If you need a fully defined architecture, a written engineering ladder, and a steering committee before you can act, you’ll be frustrated within 90 days.

Closing

If you want to design the systems that make EV charging work everywhere — even underground, even offline — and be the technical leader a strong team chooses to follow, we’d love to hear from you. The work is real, the constraints are real, and we’re hiring the person who’ll set the technical standard the platform is held to.

Principal Architect