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Lead Engineer

Build the Platform Behind Great Days Out

The Challenge That Makes This Role Unique

Every day, thousands of people across Germany and the USA visit a zoo, theme park, or aquarium. Behind that simple ticket purchase is a surprisingly complex world: membership tiers with different benefits, seasonal pricing rules, capacity management, timed entry slots, and add-on purchases for parking or special exhibits.

Now multiply that by hundreds of venues. Add point-of-sale systems and kiosks on site. Integrate access control hardware at entry gates. Sync everything in real-time. Make it work reliably when the internet connection is spotty. And somehow keep it simple enough that seasonal staff can learn it in an afternoon.

That's ToucanTix - the all-in-one platform handling ticketing, access control, retail, and visitor management for attractions across the DACH region and the USA. Built on KORONA's proven 30-year platform, trusted by major attractions across Europe including theme parks, experience villages, and safari parks handling millions of visitors annually.

The Technical Problems

We're solving genuinely interesting challenges:

  • Multi-tenant architecture with extreme customization: Each client needs radically different business logic (pricing rules, capacity models, integrations), but we maintain a single codebase. How do you balance flexibility with maintainability?
  • Offline-first POS systems with perfect sync: Kiosks and terminals need to work when internet is spotty, then sync seamlessly when connectivity returns. How do you handle conflict resolution and ensure data integrity across hundreds of locations?
  • Complex pricing engines: Rules that change based on weather, season, capacity, time of day, customer type, and dozens of other factors - all while keeping queries performant. How do you model this without creating a nightmare?
  • Hardware integration at scale: Every venue has different turnstiles, scanners, printers, and access control systems. How do you build an integration layer that's extensible without becoming unmaintainable?

If you're tired of optimizing ad clicks or building features that get buried in some enterprise menu, this is different. Your code directly impacts whether thousands of people have a great day out.

The Role

We're at an inflection point. Our CSO just joined from Beckerbillett (a traditional ticketing leader) and is bringing in enterprise deals. The market demand is there.

Now we need to scale the engineering team to match.

You'll be joining as our senior technical hire to work directly with the founder on:

  • Backend architecture and core platform development
  • Technical decisions and system design
  • Feature ownership from concept to production
  • Setting engineering standards as we grow the team
  • API design and integration strategies

This is a hands-on individual contributor role with significant influence. You'll write code daily, but you'll also help shape our technical direction for years to come.

What You'll Do

  • Build and ship product features end-to-end (backend → frontend → production)
  • Make pragmatic architecture choices to balance speed and scalability
  • Leverage AI tools effectively to move faster without sacrificing quality
  • Work with incomplete requirements and make good decisions
  • Debug issues across the stack without waiting on others
  • Collaborate directly with the founder on product and technical strategy
  • Help establish engineering practices as we grow

What We're Looking For

You're likely a good fit if you:

  • Have built and shipped real products to production (not just internal tools)
  • Are comfortable owning features across the full stack (backend-leaning is fine)
  • Can work with ambiguity and make principled technical decisions
  • Care about product quality and user experience, not just code correctness
  • Prefer shipping and iterating over endless planning
  • Want meaningful ownership, not just a job executing someone else's vision

Technical expectations:

  • Strong backend engineering experience (3+ years shipping production code)
  • Comfort working across the full stack when needed
  • Experience with or willingness to quickly learn Rails
  • Understanding of database design, APIs, and system architecture
  • Bonus: experience with multi-tenant systems, offline-first applications, or complex business logic modeling

You probably won't be happy if you:

  • Need detailed specs and established processes for everything
  • Want to specialize in a single narrow area
  • Prefer large teams with defined career ladders
  • Need maximum salary optimization right now

Tech Stack

Ruby on Rails, Svelte, PostgreSQL, GraphQL, Google Cloud-based.

Experience with our exact stack helps, but we care more about your ability to learn and ship quality code.

What You Get

Compensation

Competitive salary based on experience. We're bootstrapped but flexible for the right candidate. We'll discuss compensation transparently with qualified applicants.

What makes this worth it:

  • Real ownership: Shape technical decisions, not just execute them
  • Direct impact: Your code runs attractions visited by millions annually
  • Interesting problems: Multi-tenant systems, offline-first sync, complex domain modeling
  • Strong foundation: Leverage Combase's 80+ team when you need support
  • Autonomy: We trust you to work how you work best

Practical details:

  • Fully remote (occasional meetups in Berlin)
  • Flexible hours, async-first culture
  • MacBook + home office budget
  • Team offsites
  • Free admission to our client and VDFU attractions

Growth potential:
Early engineering hires will have massive influence as we scale. Opportunities to hire and mentor engineers, become CTO, or take on as much ownership as you want. We're expanding rapidly across DACH with strong customer demand.

Our Foundation

ToucanTix is powered by Combase AG, a successful company with 30 years of experience that developed KORONA - the platform our technology is based on. This gives us:

  • Proven technology foundation (KORONA has served thousands of merchants for decades)
  • Engineering / Marketing / Support resources (80+ team members across Dresden and Las Vegas)
  • Independence to move fast on our specialized vertical

We build for actual customers, not investor demos. We have real revenue, real clients, and real growth.

How to Apply

Send your application to [email protected]

Include:

  1. Your CV/resume (or LinkedIn)
  2. A brief note covering:
    • A technical challenge you're proud of solving (what made it interesting?)
    • Why this role interests you (honest answers appreciated)
    • Your favorite roller coaster, theme park, or most memorable experience (we're curious!)
  3. Something you've built (GitHub, side project, or work you can share)
  4. Important: Put a 🎢 emoji in your subject line so we know you actually read this. We get tons of bot applications.

Not Sure Yet?

This might be right for you if:

  • You want to build something from (nearly) the ground up
  • You'd rather have ownership and impact than maximum salary right now
  • You're interested in hard technical problems in an unusual domain
  • You want to work directly with founders, not through layers of management

This might be wrong if:

  • You're looking for a big team with established processes
  • You want to focus on one specialty area exclusively
  • You prefer working on mature products with clear requirements

If you're on the fence, apply anyway. Worst case, we have an interesting conversation about Rails, Svelte and theme parks. Best case, you find your next engineering home.