Tech Lead

At Basic-Fit, we work every day towards our goal: making fitness accessible to everyone. With more than 5 million members and over 2000 clubs in 7 countries, we are the largest fitness chain in Europe and we are growing fast. We open a new club almost every day.

Behind that growth lies a digital experience that millions of members interact with every day: our app, website, chatbot and digital services in the club. These customer-facing products support sales, self-service and retention in ten European markets. They need to be fast, reliable and continuously evolving – and that calls for strong technical leaders who set the direction for how we build.

As a Tech Lead, you are the technical authority within your domain. You take the lead for architecture decisions, code quality improvements and the technical direction of the applications and systems that millions of members use every day. You also bring strong knowledge of infrastructure and cloud, and you are accountable for the platforms these applications run on. You will focus on the Shared Platform – enabling our development teams by providing a solid technical foundation, defining guardrails and standardizing our solutions. Next to that the Shared Platform owns the shared services and platforms that make the other domains possible: member administration, marketing automation and content management.

Your Role

As a Tech Lead, you are responsible for the technical design, engineering delivery and operational reliability of the customer-facing applications and underlying systems within your scope, including the cloud infrastructure they run on. You still write code actively yourself, but also spend significate time on design reviews, unblocking teammates and aligning technical direction with product goals.

You work closely with the Engineering Manager and Product Owners to translate product ambitions into technically feasible plans and realistic time estimates. You switch just as easily between engineers about an architecture choice and business stakeholders about feasibility and impact. You are able to say no when a plan is unrealistic, and you back this up with technical arguments that are also understandable for non-technical stakeholders.

Your authority lies with the technical approach – not with engineers’ careers. You coach developers, safeguard quality standards and make sure technical debt is managed consciously. You make well-founded infrastructure and cloud decisions that balance reliability, security, scalability and cost. You feel comfortable in an environment where not everything is defined upfront, and you bring structure and clarity where needed.

Your tasks:

• Making architecture decisions and setting technical direction for the customer-facing applications and underlying systems within your scope, including their infrastructure and cloud architecture, so that solutions are scalable, secure and performant in ten European markets.
• Designing, owning and evolving our cloud and infrastructure architecture (compute, networking, storage, containers and managed services), and making well-founded build-versus-buy and platform choices, together with the team.
• Actively writing code and contributing hands-on to the development of the products that millions of members use every day.
• Conducting design reviews, safeguarding code quality standards and establishing best practices around testing, CI/CD and operational excellence.
• Continuously improving CI/CD pipelines, deployment strategies and release safety.
• Drawing up realistic delivery plans by honestly estimating technical complexity, flagging risks early and proposing feasible alternatives when ambitions and planning do not match.
• Collaborating with Product Owners and business stakeholders to translate product ambitions into technically feasible solutions – and communicating clearly when something is not possible, does not fit, or could be done better another way.
• Coaching engineers on implementation, architecture and best practices, without formal hierarchical responsibility.
• Consciously prioritising and managing “tech debt” – weighing up when pragmatism is preferred and when refactoring is necessary.
• Taking ownership of the reliability and performance of systems within your scope (including the underlying infrastructure and cloud platform), including monitoring, incident response and continuous improvement.
• Ensuring the infrastructure is resilient, secure and highly available, including scaling, access management and compliance (such as GDPR).
• Aligning with other Tech Leads to ensure technical consistency, reuse and knowledge sharing across the entire customer-facing domain.
• Working with the Engineering Manager and the broader IT leadership team on technology strategy and cross-domain initiatives.

Who are you?

• Proven experience as a Tech Lead, Senior Engineer, Staff Engineer or in a comparable technical leadership role, with a track record of delivering complex software in production.
• Strong hands-on programming skills – you write high-quality code yourself and show this in your daily work.
• Experience with infrastructure and cloud: you have designed, built and operated production workloads on a major public cloud platform (such as Microsoft Azure).
• Solid knowledge of modern web and mobile application architecture, APIs, integration patterns and cloud infrastructure.
• Proven ability to create realistic plans: you can translate technical complexity into time estimates that hold up, and you dare to push back when a plan is not feasible.
• Strong communicator with both engineers and business stakeholders – you can explain technical trade-offs in language everyone understands.
• Experience coaching developers and raising the technical level of a team.
• Experience in subscription-based, retail or location-based businesses is a strong advantage.
• Pragmatic and results-oriented – you deliver working software and know when “good enough” is the right choice and when it is not.
• Knowledge of other languages within the Basic-Fit markets – French, Spanish or German – is a strong advantage.

Why this role is interesting

You set the technical direction of the products that millions of members use every day – to find a club, sign up, manage their membership, book sessions and interact with Basic-Fit. Your architecture decisions have a direct impact on the speed, reliability and continued development of these products in six countries.

This role combines hands-on technical leadership with real business impact in a fast-growing international company. You write code, make architecture decisions and see the effect immediately on millions of users – without the distance that comes with purely managerial roles. You will also shape the infrastructure and cloud foundation that keeps these products fast, secure and available at scale.

What do we offer you?

• A technical leadership role with real ownership of the architecture and quality of customer-facing products, in a fast-growing international organisation.

• The chance to help shape the technical direction of products used by more than 5 million members across Europe.

What you can expect from us:

• Office: A great workspace in the Plan-T building, right next to Tilburg Central Station
• Training & development: Unlimited access to GoodHabitz and LinkedIn Learning.
• Career opportunities: Plenty of room for growth, both professionally and personally.
• Enjoyment at work: An informal, international, and down-to-earth working atmosphere. Because we value collaboration, we work four days a week in the office and one day from home.
• Innovation: Your ideas contribute to strategic projects that are directly visible to millions of members.
• Salary: A gross monthly salary between €5,350 and €7,850 based on 40 hours, depending on your experience and background.
• Travel allowance, bike plan, health insurance discounts and remote work allowance.
• Sport: Access to our gym at head office.

About Basic-Fit

Basic-Fit is the European leader in the value-for-money fitness market, with more than 5 million members in 2.000+ clubs across 7 countries. We continue to grow and constantly improve. Are you looking for a place where you can make an impact and enjoy your work? Then you've come to the right place with us!

What makes us unique?

• Working with impact: What you do makes a difference. We work not only for, but with our members, partners, and teams.
• Collaboration: Everyone works together to achieve goals and celebrate successes.
• Diversity and inclusion: Everyone is welcome in our work environment.

🎯 Apply now!

Are you ready for your next adventure? Apply and we will contact you as soon as possible.

Questions? Feel free to contact Yara at [email protected].

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