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Senior Backend Engineer

Role overview

Summary

This role is for a Senior Backend Engineer at an early-stage technology business focused on eCommerce. You will take ownership of backend architecture and engineering, influencing the platform's evolution while collaborating with various teams to deliver new features.

Qualifications

  • At least 4 years' experience building and maintaining production-grade backend systems.
  • Strong programming skills and the ability to write clean, maintainable and well-structured code.
  • Experience designing databases, APIs and backend infrastructure.
  • An understanding of high-throughput systems and background job queues.
  • Preferred: A genuine interest in developer experience and building tools and systems that make life easier for other engineers.

Responsibilities

  • Design and build robust, scalable backend systems and services.
  • Develop and maintain APIs and backend architecture.
  • Architect infrastructure for job processing, analytics and event tracking.
  • Collaborate closely with product, design and customer experience teams to deliver new features.

Key facts

Hard skills

Other skills

  • Problem Solving
  • Collaboration
  • Decision Making

About the company

The Growth Foundation logo

The Growth Foundation

  • Management Consulting
  • Startup
  • 11–50
Not all growth is good. The wrong kind is exhausting and unfocused. Growing, but into areas that are time-consuming and unprofitable. New unknowns appearing daily on the horizon. At The Growth Foundation, we’ve seen business growth first-hand, recognise the patterns and know the right way to grow; with all your foundations working together, a view of what’s coming next and what’s needed to make it happen. The right people and the right skills in the right jobs. A killer proposition, clearly defined, and an inspiring vision for the future to grow into. Our founders helped grow play.com THG and Gymshark into unicorn companies. Now they head up a team of industry-leading experts and highly-skilled specialists, who can help your business navigate the growth ahead successfully; pitfalls avoided, no opportunity missed.

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Job description

Early-stage technology business | eCommerce | remote

The Opportunity

We're working with an ambitious, early-stage technology business developing innovative solutions for eCommerce brands.

They're looking for an experienced Senior Backend Engineer to play a key role in building and scaling their technology platform.

This is an opportunity to take ownership of backend architecture and engineering, working across API development, data pipelines, background job processing and infrastructure. You'll have the autonomy to make technical decisions, build robust systems and influence how the platform evolves as the business grows.

The Role

You'll be responsible for designing, developing and maintaining the backend systems that underpin the platform, with a focus on performance, scalability, security and reliability.

Key responsibilities will include:

  • Designing and building robust, scalable backend systems and services.

  • Developing and maintaining APIs and backend architecture.

  • Architecting infrastructure for job processing, analytics and event tracking.

  • Building internal tools to support authentication, rate limiting and quota management.

  • Working with data pipelines and background processing systems.

  • Optimising system performance, security and scalability.

  • Taking ownership of the full engineering lifecycle, including code quality, testing, infrastructure and monitoring.

  • Collaborating closely with product, design and customer experience teams to deliver new features.

  • Identifying opportunities to improve development processes, tooling and technical architecture.

Technical Experience

We're interested in engineers with experience across a combination of the following technologies:

  • Languages: Python, TypeScript

  • Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS (ECS, SQS, Parameter Store), Docker

  • Databases & Data: PostgreSQL, Redis

  • CI/CD: GitHub Actions

  • Monitoring & Observability: LogFire, Sentry

About You

You'll ideally bring:

  • At least 4 years' experience building and maintaining production-grade backend systems.

  • Strong programming skills and the ability to write clean, maintainable and well-structured code.

  • Experience designing databases, APIs and backend infrastructure.

  • An understanding of high-throughput systems and background job queues.

  • A strong sense of ownership, taking responsibility for code, infrastructure, testing and monitoring.

  • The confidence to make sound technical decisions in a fast-moving, early-stage environment.

  • A genuine interest in developer experience and building tools and systems that make life easier for other engineers.

Desirable Experience

Experience in any of the following would be advantageous:

  • Rate limiting, authentication systems and quota management.

  • Analytics, attribution engineering and event tracking.

  • Data platforms such as dbt and Snowflake.

  • Building WYSIWYG editors.

  • PDF generation, rendering processes and image manipulation.

  • Server-side rendering frameworks such as Next.js or Remix.

Why Consider This Opportunity?

This is a chance to join an early-stage technology business at an exciting point in its development, taking genuine ownership of its backend engineering and helping shape the technical foundations of a growing platform.

If you're a hands-on backend engineer who enjoys solving complex problems, building scalable systems and having a real influence on the technology you work with, we'd be interested in hearing from you.

We are committed to creating an inclusive recruitment process and welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. We believe diverse teams bring different ideas and approaches, and encourage applications from anyone who feels they have the skills and experience to succeed in this role.

We aim to respond to all applicants as soon as possible. If you have not heard from us within two weeks of submitting your application, please assume that on this occasion your application has been unsuccessful. Thank you for your interest and for taking the time to apply.

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