Staff Engineer, Absences (d/f/m)

Staff Engineer, Absences (d/f/m)

Product & Tech | Full Time | Berlin, Munich or London

Overview

This role requires 2 days per week in the office and is based in Berlin, Munich or London. Join us to shape the future of software in the underserved and high-impact HR technology industry. Your work will have a direct and tangible impact on customers, offering ownership and the chance to make a meaningful difference. As we prepare for significant growth, you'll face exciting challenges and have the opportunity to influence our path toward becoming one of the world’s leading tech companies.

Responsibilities

As a Staff Engineer in the Absences team, part of Personio's Time area, you will set the technical direction for the systems that power how organisations across Europe manage leave and absence. Time sits at the heart of Personio, and absence data flows directly into payroll, so the work is both high stakes and deeply interconnected. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an engineer who can anchor complex, long-running initiatives across teams, find the simplest path through genuine regulatory complexity, and raise the bar for everyone around them.

• Set technical direction: Define the architecture and patterns for the absence management systems, covering accruals, entitlements, and complex real-world cases, setting standards that other teams adopt rather than mandate.
• Solve the hardest problems simply: Find the simplest robust solution to complex domain and regulatory challenges, writing meaningful amounts of production code yourself where it matters most.
• Drive complex initiatives end to end: Lead long-running technical efforts that span team boundaries, taking accountability for delivery and quality the whole way through.
• Model regulatory complexity cleanly: Tackle rules that vary significantly by market and company, from mandatory tracking in Germany and Spain to differing break, overtime, and entitlement logic, and design architecture that hides that complexity rather than spreading it.
• Keep money-critical data trustworthy: Ensure absence data feeds accurately into pay calculations, treating correctness, reliability, and explainability as the bar across the systems you shape.
• Raise operational excellence: Set the standard for how services are deployed, observed, and maintained, keeping critical flows dependable at scale and deliberately reducing complexity.
• Coach and elevate engineers: Mentor senior engineers through design feedback, pairing on hard problems, and the example you set, raising the technical bar across the team and beyond.

Qualifications

• Backend and distributed systems expertise: A strong track record architecting and delivering complex backend systems in production, ideally where correctness and reliability were non-negotiable.
• Systems-level thinking: The ability to see how separate services and teams fit into one coherent whole, and to design the contracts between them.
• Architectural judgement with a bias for simplicity: Strong instincts for choosing the most reliable and efficient solution rather than the most elaborate one, especially in a domain where the rules differ by market.
• Hands-on delivery: Comfort staying close to the code and contributing significant production work while also setting direction for others.
• Cross-team technical leadership: Demonstrated ability to anchor long-running initiatives spanning multiple teams, from direction-setting through to a shipped, dependable result.
• Operational excellence: Strong instincts for CI/CD, observability, and keeping critical services reliable in production.
• Coaching and influence: A history of raising standards and supporting the growth of the engineers around you.

Benefits

Personio is an equal opportunities employer, committed to building an integrative culture where everyone feels welcomed and supported. We embrace uniqueness and understand that our diverse, values-driven culture makes us stronger.

In addition, you’ll benefit from:

• A competitive reward package including salary, benefits, and pre-IPO equity.
• 28 days of paid vacation, plus additional days after 2 and 4 years.
• One fully paid Impact Day per year.
• Generous family leave, mental health support, and sabbatical opportunities.
• Regular team events, healthy office snacks, drinks, and weekly catered lunches.

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