AI Empowered Maintenance Developer / Technical Lead

What you will do

You will take a key role in building a new maintenance development team within a Belgian housing organisation. As the first developer to join, you will combine hands-on application maintenance with technical leadership, team building and process development.

In the initial phase, you will take over technical maintenance of two small .NET applications, making responsible use of AI tooling. Your work includes handling incidents, bug fixes, limited functional changes, security fixes, dependency updates, technical debt, testing, releases and technical documentation. You will actively explore where AI can accelerate or improve analysis, development, testing, code review and documentation, while maintaining human control, software quality, governance and security.

The assignment goes beyond maintaining these first applications. You will help shape the new team both in content and organisation, and contribute actively to the existing project plan to build a fully-fledged maintenance development team. Together with colleagues, you will develop a repeatable approach for controlled handover, intake and maintenance of additional applications.

You will build the necessary standards, documents, checklists, templates, work instructions and quality criteria. Think of intake and handover criteria, technical and functional documentation requirements, application dossiers, knowledge transfer, development and review guidelines, testing and release agreements, security and quality controls, monitoring, logging, incident handling and lifecycle management.

As additional applications and developers are added, you will take a guiding role. You will coach new team members, ensure a consistent way of working and help determine which competencies and capacity are needed to build the team sustainably. The intention is that knowledge does not remain with one person, but is anchored in documentation, tooling, processes and collaboration.

Your responsibilities

• Hands-on maintenance and further stabilisation of the first two small .NET applications
• Responsible application of AI during analysis, development, debugging, testing, code review and documentation
• Development and application of a standardised intake and handover process for applications
• Building a reusable maintenance framework with checklists, templates, quality criteria and work instructions
• Active contribution to the project plan, phasing, risks, dependencies and growth steps of the team
• Defining and applying responsibilities between project development teams and the maintenance development team
• Setting up and improving CI/CD, testing, security, logging, monitoring, release and incident processes
• Securing knowledge through application dossiers, technical documentation, runbooks and handover moments
• Coaching and onboarding of future developers and support with further staffing of the team
• Reporting on progress, maintainability, risks, quality and required capacity

What we are looking for

We are looking for a technically strong and pragmatic senior .NET professional who enjoys building both software and a new way of working. You feel comfortable in a pioneering role: you can start independently, but actively involve the right stakeholders and ensure that choices are transferable and scalable.

Must have

• Strong hands-on expertise in .NET/C# and experience with understanding and maintaining existing applications
• 5+ years of experience as technical lead or senior developer, with attention to architecture, quality and coaching leadership
• 8+ years of experience in software development and maintenance of existing applications
• Practical experience with AI-assisted development and critically assessing AI-generated proposals
• Experience with maintenance: incidents, bug fixes, small changes, security and dependencies
• Experience with CI/CD, cloud environments and operational aspects such as logging, monitoring and releases
• Experience with tooling such as Octopus Deploy, TeamCity, XperiDo, ElasticSearch, ASP.NET MVC, NServiceBus
• Experience with cloud infrastructure Azure, Azure ServiceBus
• Hands-on experience with C#, .NET, debugging, refactoring and automated testing
• Ability to build and improve processes, standards, checklists and documentation pragmatically
• Experience with application handover, knowledge transfer or professionalising a maintenance or RUN operation is an important asset
• Experience with frameworks, standards, checklists, templates and development guidelines
• Strong written documentation and communication skills
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with sufficient persuasiveness to establish new working methods
• Fluent in Dutch (C2 level)

Should have

• Higher education (Master or Bachelor) with technical/engineering background or equivalent through experience
• Coaching, connecting and pragmatic working style
• Experience with Agile/Scrum or Kanban in a maintenance context
• Experience with CI/CD processes and release automation
• Experience with coaching, onboarding and knowledge anchoring within development teams
• Experience with logging, monitoring and observability
• Experience with secure software development and vulnerability management

Nice to have

• Experience with project planning, risk monitoring and stakeholder alignment
• Ability to start independently while collaborating transparently

Expected contribution in the start-up phase

• Apply a first workable maintenance approach to the two .NET applications and improve it based on practice
• Make gaps in code, testing, documentation, security, monitoring and transferability visible and help remediate them
• Together with stakeholders, establish and use a minimal set of intake criteria and an application handover checklist
• Help structure a maintenance backlog and technical roadmap, including risks and technical debt
• Set up working agreements for development, review, testing, release, incidents and documentation
• Formulate proposals for the next team members and for the distribution of senior, medior and shared expertise
• Translate lessons learned from the first applications into a scalable model for future applications

This is not exclusively a coaching or advisory role. You will actively take on maintenance and development tasks yourself and build the team and working methods from that practical experience.

The setting

This assignment runs for one year, starting in November 2026. You will work for a Belgian housing organisation in Flanders. Remote work is possible. The working language is Dutch.