Depop is hiring a Senior Backend Software Engineer to join our mission of making fashion circular. You'll be a key member of a backend-focused team, designing and managing the core systems that power our community-powered marketplace for millions of users.
What You'll Do
- Work closely with Engineering Managers, Product Managers, and engineers to understand problems and design robust solutions.
- Produce high-quality, well-structured code used by 1M+ active daily users.
- Own product development from feature discovery and work breakdown through to implementation.
- Manage end-to-end application support, including production incident management.
- Embrace agile methodologies and user-centred thinking.
- Participate in continuous improvement via blameless post-mortems, architecture reviews, and engineering guilds.
- Collaborate daily with engineers in a cross-functional team environment.
- Mentor and coach colleagues to elevate the team.
- Own your code, workflows, and data through their entire lifecycle.
What We're Looking For
- Solid software engineering experience.
- Strong evidence you can learn our TypeScript and Scala stack effectively.
- Willingness to work across multiple paradigms and languages, including backend or data work with TypeScript, Scala, and Python.
- Strong technical and non-technical communication skills.
- Proficiency in testing solutions at different levels, including unit and integration.
- Experience with relational or non-relational databases, preferably PostgreSQL and DynamoDB.
- Experience with Kubernetes or similar container orchestration.
Nice to Have
- Writing high-quality code in Scala, Java, or another JVM language.
- Experience with TypeScript or Python.
- Experience with stream processing using tools like Kafka.
- Experience building scalable web applications serving 10,000s of requests per second.
- Experience with DevOps culture and CI/CD pipelines.
- Ability to proactively find and solve complex problems independently.
- Product-oriented mindset focused on solving real business problems.
- Experience with iterative development using A/B testing.
- Experience with the Play framework.
- Experience with eCommerce platforms.
- Experience with event-driven architectures, preferably using Kafka.
- Experience using production AWS infrastructure, ideally with Terraform.
- Experience with data engineering.
Technical Stack
- Languages: Scala, Java (JVM languages), TypeScript, Python
- Databases: PostgreSQL, DynamoDB
- Infrastructure & Tools: Kafka, Kubernetes, AWS, Terraform, Play framework
Team & Environment
You'll join a backend-focused team of 5+ engineers, working closely with an Engineering Manager and a Product Manager.
Benefits & Compensation
- Healthcare: PMI and cash plan access with Bupa.
- Mental Wellbeing: Subsidised counselling with Self Space, an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), and Mental Health First Aiders.
- Leave: 25 days annual leave with option to carry over up to 5 days, 1 company-wide day off per quarter, and up to 2 days paid volunteering leave.
- Career Growth: Budgets for conferences, learning subscriptions, mentorship, and upskilling programmes.
- Lifestyle: Cycle to Work scheme, dog-friendly offices, and a fully paid 4-week sabbatical after 5 years.
- Flexibility: MyMode hybrid-working model with Flex, Office Based, and Remote options, and the ability to work abroad for 4 weeks per year.
- Family Support: 18 weeks of paid parental leave, IVF leave, shared parental leave, and paid emergency parent/carer leave.
- Financial: Life Insurance (3x salary), pension matching up to 6%, and free shipping on Depop sales within the UK.
- Recognition: Special milestones are celebrated with gifts and rewards.
Work Mode
This role follows a hybrid-working model (MyMode) with options for Flex, Office Based, or Remote work, dependent on the role. Positions are based in London, New York, or Manchester.
We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer, providing employment opportunities without regard to age, ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy or maternity, marriage and civil partnership, or any other protected status.
