We’re building the most comprehensive event tech platform on the planet. Our system helps event organizers plan, promote, and sell tickets for their events. We work with a wide range of music venues, clubs, theaters, festivals, and other event organizers in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium to help make their events a success. We're looking for a Principal Engineer who can provide technical direction, make bold architectural decisions, inspire others, and build scalable, future-proof systems.

About the Stager application

The Stager application is primarily built in Kotlin, on top of the RePlay framework (a fork of Play1). RePlay provides useful features like routing, plugins, Hibernate ORM, and Groovy-based templates. However, we are transitioning to more type-safe solutions such as jOOQ for SQL, kotlinx.html for views, and OpenAPI for our APIs. We’re also modernizing our frontend: moving away from React and jQuery and increasingly building in Elm—for greater safety and easier maintenance. These changes pave the way for eventually moving away from the RePlay framework to a more suitable alternative. Additionally, Stager includes a separate waiting room service that activates ahead of the ticket shop during peak traffic. This service operates independently of the monolithic application and uses Redis.

Your role

As a Principal Engineer, you help shape the technical strategy and safeguard the company’s long-term vision. With deep expertise and strong analytical skills, you support complex technical decision-making, coach other developers, improve developer ergonomics, and strengthen the tech culture. You work closely with the product team to build sustainable solutions and design scalable, maintainable systems where quality, security, and performance come first.

What will you do?

· Help define the technical strategy: Where do we want to go with our tech stack—and why?

· Guide technical decisions to ensure alignment with the company’s long-term vision.

· Own the technical roadmap and architectural choices.

· Be consulted on complex technical challenges.

· Mentor other developers and share your knowledge with them.

· Lead internal review processes (code reviews, RFCs).

· Contribute to both what we build and how we build it.

· Help translate features into sustainable technical solutions.

· Design and improve scalable, maintainable systems.

· Work on long-term technical quality.

· Safeguard consistency, security, performance, and system robustness.

Who are you?

· Proven experience in a similar role (minimum 10 years).

· Solid experience with a statically typed backend language such as Kotlin (which we use), Java, C#, or C++.

· Strong experience with relational databases and SQL.

· Proven experience with cloud infrastructure, such as AWS.

· Comfortable working with Linux as an operating system.

· Collaborative and decisive.

· Strong analytical skills.

· Curious about new technologies and eager to explore ways to integrate them into your work.

· A passion for events – after all, we work in the event industry.

· Fluent in English; Dutch is a plus.

· Based in the Netherlands, preferably in the Den Haag–Dordrecht–Gouda triangle, and in possession of a residence or work permit.

What do we offer?

· Combine work and hobby: If you have a passion for the events industry, you can combine your work and hobby.

· A competitive annual salary.

· Grow with us: Stager is a scale-up, and you will grow alongside the company.

· Nice customers and partners: We work with great clients and partners, maintaining close contact to discuss the development of Stager.

· Challenging: Stager is a comprehensive system, making it all the more challenging and varied to work on.

· Friendly work environment: We have a fun and close-knit team with an open-minded culture where you are encouraged to contribute ideas on all aspects of the business.

· We plan for your future: We set aside a sustainable pension for you, giving you control over it.

· Flexibility: Flexible working hours and the option to work partially from home.

· Work-life balance: We believe it's important to maintain a good balance between work and personal life.

· Extra benefits: Monthly client visits, internal events, and an annual team trip. Plus, tickets to clients' events.

How can I apply?

Well, it's simple! Just go to our website https://stager.homerun.co/?lang=nl and let us know who you are! The application deadline is June 1st. Initial interviews will take place in weeks 22 and 23.