About us
Most people dream of being able to play an instrument – and at flowkey, we’re dedicated to making that dream a reality. With our innovative app, we provide an easy and motivating way to learn to play the piano. Since our founding in 2014, flowkey has become one of the leading players in this field, helping millions of people worldwide discover the joy of piano playing.
What sets us apart is not just our product – it’s the journey we’ve taken together. Thanks to our early success and sustained profitability, we’ve been able to grow independently and foster a culture that truly reflects our values.
At flowkey, mutual respect, authenticity, and trust are at the heart of everything we do. We believe different perspectives drive creativity and innovation, which is why we celebrate our differences and offer equal opportunities for everyone. Our goal is to create an inspiring environment where both personal and professional growth are not only possible but actively encouraged.
Why you’ll love working with us
We believe a great company does more than just support your professional success – it empowers you to live life on your own terms and grow into the person you aspire to be. Here are a few ways we strive to do that:
- Flexibility: You’ll have the freedom to structure your days in the way that suits you best, with self-determined work hours and only a few fixed meetings.
- Hybrid Work: While we prefer in-person collaboration, our flexible setup allows you to work from home, our office in the heart of Berlin, or occasionally from anywhere else in the world.
- Home Base Berlin: We’ve got your back with visa support to help you make Berlin your new home, because being part of our team means enjoying life in this vibrant city.
- Shared Success: We share part of the company's annual profits among the entire team, on top of a competitive salary. This way, everyone benefits from our continuous growth.
- Learning & Development: From mastering new skills to exploring fresh ideas, we support your growth with a €2,500 annual learning budget and 10 days of paid experimentation leave.
- Time to Recharge: You’ll have 33 days of vacation per year to unwind and recharge.
- A Piano for Your Home: We love music, and we live it. Whatever style you enjoy, you’ll find like-minded people here. Plus, you’ll even receive your own piano to play at home.
Where you come in
As the Tech Lead of Core Technologies at flowkey, you will work alongside our world-class engineering and cross-functional product teams on a uniquely diverse, modern tech stack. Together, we will develop, maintain, and innovate on the technologies that enable flowkey’s award-winning user experiences for millions of people around the world.
As technical lead, you will be directly responsible for unlocking and ensuring the feasibility of highly innovative solutions to some of the company’s greatest technological challenges. Examples include real-time polyphonic note detection and score following, recommendation and skill detection systems, and synchronizing video playback with sheet music. You and the team will ensure these core systems are performant, usable, and bug free. Your regular 1:1 mentorship and feedback sessions with the software engineers in Core Technologies will help to guide them towards the next level of technical excellence. In collaboration with our CTO and other Tech Leads, you will help shape the direction of the Engineering department as a whole.
You will thrive in this role if you love to think outside the box; to bend technologies to your will in order to solve novel challenges. You don’t always need a clearly documented path forward. Instead, you enjoy solving challenging problems from first principles in a clean, elegant, and understandable manner. You are happy to give and receive feedback to foster growth and common understanding across the team.
We want to share with you our passion for innovation, curiosity, and learning. We encourage all team members to focus on areas that interest and excite them the most, and actively foster self-responsibility, self-direction, experimentation and growth.
What you’ll bring
Essential:
- Degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience and accomplishments (understanding of fundamental data structures, memory management, and algorithms is a must).
- Above-average problem solving skills.
- Extensive experience with Audio DSP and MIDI.
- Strong proficiency in TypeScript or Python and in at least one of Swift, C, or Rust.
- Proven technical leadership of a substantial project in those languages.
- Proven ability to profile, debug, and systematically improve computational and memory resource usage / performance.
- Willingness to learn by doing, think creatively, and work with unproven solutions and/or incomplete knowledge.
- Eagerness to learn through a feedback culture and share knowledge with the team.
Bonus points:
- Prior technical leadership and mentoring experience
- AWS, MongoDB
- Experience with Apple’s UIKit and the Android NDK.
- Metal / OpenGL programming (esp. compute shaders)
- Active interest in contributing to open source
Experience in any particular technology or process is far less important to us than the ability to learn quickly, turn ideas into solid code, and easily ramp up in new areas.
We warmly encourage candidates from underrepresented backgrounds to apply, even if you’re unsure about meeting every job requirement. Your unique perspective is valuable, and we’d love to hear from you!
Ready to apply?
Please click on “Apply to Position” to submit your cover letter in English, along with your CV through our application form.
We’re already excited to meet you!