Technical Lead - Innovation Projects

About us:

At the Lufthansa Innovation Hub, we’re pioneering the future of travel for the Lufthansa Group, the industry, but most importantly for everyone who travels.

The landscape of the travel industry is changing. Our job is to identify these shifts and translate them into new business opportunities by building a valuable portfolio of travel companies and products.

Job summary:

Together with our Venture Managers from the New Business stream, you initiate a new project or join once the commercial validation has been done. You will get a unique insight into the corporate world of one of the worlds biggest airline groups, while working with us in Berlin in a team with a lean startup mindset, which provides an incredible platform for building products.

As the technical lead on one or multiple innovation projects you are responsible for development of a prototype or scaling up an existing solution. Sometimes the best fit will be that you develop a custom application end-to-end full stack, and sometimes you might choose an existing startup’s solution or introduce a no-code platform for the MVP – less is more.

Projects can vary from having service robots running around an airport, building a seat booking engine that thousands of passengers will use or experimenting with digital twins of airlines.

If a project is successful and also shows external demand, we might spin it off into it’s own company. In these cases you can join the new company as a technical co-founder and build up your own startup – or you can also stay onboard for the next internal project

Examples of current projects & ventures:

• https://www.usecosmos.com/
• https://www.swifty.so/
• https://www.uptrip.app/
• https://www.squake.earth/
• https://compensaid.com/
• Quoting & Price Engine for express logistics
• Prediction Engine to reduce food waste on airplanes

What You’ll Do:

• Product Ownership: Take charge of one or multiple products within the Lufthansa Innovation Hub, developed in Ruby on Rails and JavaScript (mostly React) & CSS. Evaluate ideas and demands from our venture builders critically, and guide projects to ensure the creation of products that validate new innovation ideas.
• Development: Transform new business concepts or existing challenges into technical products, from initial concept to prototype application – with your own code or where possible also using existing solutions, SaaS tools or low-code platforms.
• Experiment: Play around with new technologies that might be promising for our ventures, also moving away from our default tech stack, where it makes sense.
• Team Support: Onboard, mentor, and assist other engineers, ensuring they remain unblocked and productive.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Use your technical expertise to ideate with venture builders and generate new innovation ideas and educate non-technical team members on using low or no-code tools to expedite prototype development.
• Expertise: Become a subject-matter expert for technical topics within our industry, be it booking flows, blockchain, AI, drones, flight ops, VR or whatever you are excited about.

What You’ll Bring:

• Ruby on Rails: Proven ability to build, deploy, maintain, and monitor Ruby on Rails applications, with production-ready code experience – using Rails defaults like PostgreSQL, Redis, Hotwire, Stimulus.
• Full Stack: Ability to develop features end-to-end, either rendering HTML/CSS server-side or via JS Frontend (Vue, React). Proficiency in translating designs from Figma into functional code is a plus!
• Love to Build: You thrive when building a product from scratch, cherishing the opportunity to influence its design decisions and future trajectory, while keeping a reasonable balance between productivity and longevity.
• Tech Ownership: Experience in cross-functional teams, feature planning, and ensuring that commercial requirements of a project are met. You show accountability while taking on the technical leadership of a project.
• Collaboration Skills: Strong track record of effective teamwork, exceptional self-management, and organizational skills for handling asynchronous work. Ability to make your contributions visible across multiple projects and represent your work within LIH.
• Hybrid Setup: You work in a hybrid remote setup, so being close to the Berlin office (in Mitte) is essential to participate in team gatherings and exchanges with venture managers.

Catch bonus points for:

• Experience as a startup co-founder
• Knowledge about the aviation or travel industry
• Expertise in specific technologies (e.g., Data Engineering, Blockchain, VR)
• Knowledge of DevOps (AWS, Terraform) and containerization (Docker)
• Familiarity with Java and Microsoft Azure, as widely used within the Lufthansa Group
• Fluency in German, although all our internal communication happens in English

About the Team

You will be joining a newly established engineering team at the Lufthansa Innovation Hub and will have the opportunity to significantly influence and shape the new team and our work setup. You will also collaborate closely with external engineers who are currently supporting us with developing existing and new products.

What we offer:

• Be an essential member of a smart, hard-working and growing team developing solutions for the traveller of tomorrow
• Gain deep insights into the international Travel & Mobility Tech ecosystem, as well as into aviation and corporate innovation
• Work independently and entrepreneurially owning sub-budgets and workstreams
• Enjoy an exceptional degree of flexibility and creative freedom (new work is real)
• Work with one of the most iconic brands in aviation, utilise seasoned Lufthanseats and experienced tech talent
• Experience a truly unique setting in the heart of the Berlin tech ecosystem
• Competitive compensation with benefits

At LIH, we are super committed to fostering an environment that promotes diversity and inclusivity. We do not discriminate in employment on the basis of factors irrelevant to merit, qualifications or business need such as age, race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, disability, medical status, or any other status covered by the relevant law in the areas where we operate.