At a Glance
- Tasks: Design and build resilient web scraping systems for Google and similar platforms.
- Company: Join Adthena, an award-winning search intelligence platform with a vibrant culture.
- Benefits: Enjoy remote work, trust-based vacation, stock options, and a home office stipend.
- Other info: Dynamic team environment with excellent career growth and regular social events.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in a leading tech company while honing your coding skills.
- Qualifications: Strong Python experience and familiarity with web scraping techniques required.
The predicted salary is between 60000 - 80000 £ per year.
Our Mission
Join us in shaping the future of paid search intelligence. Adthena is an award-winning search intelligence platform powered by patented AI technology and a team of dedicated experts. We help brands, marketers, and agencies dominate their competitive landscapes with unparalleled insights into the paid search market. Our Whole Market View, Smart Monitor, and Local View solutions give clients the clarity to optimize spend, increase ROI, and stay ahead of the competition.
Trusted by global brands like Citibank, L’Oréal, and Volvo, and backed by Updata Partners, we’ve been redefining search intelligence since 2012. In 2025, Adthena continued its winning streak, earning 8 major search industry awards. Highlights include Best AI Search Software Solution at the US Search Awards, Best Search Software Tool at the European Search Awards, and Best Software Innovation at the Global Search Awards.
Ready to make an impact in an industry-leading company? Let’s do it together.
Why Join Us?
We offer the best of both worlds: the maturity and stability of a well-established company combined with the energy, agility, and impact of a scaling tech organisation. If you’ve been hesitant about joining a typical tech company due to concerns about chaos, fragility, or volatility, Adthena is your answer. We’re smaller than large-scale enterprises, offering more autonomy, less red tape, and accelerated growth.
Here’s what we offer:
- Startup Engineering culture
- Strong Culture: Our quarterly surveys show a 93% average approval rating for company culture, with an overall eNPS of 27.
- Award-Winning Product: US 2025 Search Awards for Best AI Search Software Innovation
- Stock Options: Our employees do incredible work, so as we grow, everyone shares the rewards.
- Trust-Based Vacation: Take as much time off as you need, when you need it.
- Remote-First: 52% of Adthenian’s work fully remote, with others choosing Hybrid Work at our 3 Geohubs (London, Austin, Sydney).
- Flexible Work: Work how and where you do your best, with full autonomy over your day.
- Career Growth: Bespoke training and career development via "Sherpa plans” to guide your growth.
- Monthly Hackdays & Training Days
- Family Care Package: Up to 6 months fully paid maternity leave, and 2 months paternity leave.
- Home Office Stipend: $200 for your ideal remote setup.
- Swag Welcome Gift: $70 credit to grab some merch.
- Birthday Day Off: Celebrate your special day.
- Regular Socials: Summer & Christmas parties, annual and quarterly offsites, monthly meet-ups.
- Volunteer Days: Make a difference with paid volunteer time each quarter.
About the Role
Reporting to: Michal Gondar, Head of Engineering
Location: UK Remote
Interviews: 2 Stages
Start Date: ASAP
What you’ll do at Adthena
As a Senior Anti-Bot Engineer, you will design, build, and operate large-scale, resilient web scraping systems, with a strong focus on Google and Google-like search environments. This role sits at the intersection of data engineering, reverse engineering, and systems reliability, and is critical to delivering accurate, timely, and trustworthy data at scale. You will work on complex scraping problems where naïve approaches do not work, including dynamic rendering, anti-bot defences, frequent markup changes, and high-volume data collection.
Responsibilities
- Design and maintain large-scale Python scraping systems that operate reliably against Google and other highly defended websites
- Build scrapers for dynamic, JavaScript-heavy pages using browser automation and hybrid approaches
- Continuously adapt to changes in page structure, request flows, and anti-automation mechanisms
- Engineer robust extraction pipelines that prioritise data accuracy, consistency, and observability
- Implement proxy, fingerprinting, and request-routing strategies to maximise stability and throughput
- Monitor scrape health, detect failures early, and rapidly debug production issues
- Optimise performance, cost, and latency across scraping infrastructure
- Work closely with data engineers, data scientists, and product teams to ensure scraped data is usable and trusted
- Document scraping logic and operational runbooks for long-term maintainability
Who we look for
Research shows men apply if they meet ~60% of the criteria, while women and underrepresented groups apply only if they meet all requirements. If you have the skills but don't meet every requirement, reach out – we'd love to explore how you could be a great fit!
Required Experience:
- Strong professional experience with Python (or another main language, i.e. GoLang, Rust, JavaScript) including production-grade scraping systems
- Deep hands-on experience scraping Google or similarly protected platforms
- Solid understanding of HTTP, TLS, cookies, headers, redirects, and browser networking behaviour
- Experience with tools such as Playwright, Selenium, Puppeteer, or equivalent browser automation frameworks
- Strong knowledge of HTML parsing, DOM traversal, and data extraction techniques
- Experience handling rate limiting, CAPTCHA, IP rotation, and bot detection systems
- Comfortable working with asynchronous and concurrent scraping architectures
- Experience running scrapers at scale in cloud environments
- Strong debugging skills and ability to reason about complex failure modes
- Experience with headless browser fingerprinting and anti-bot evasion techniques
Nice To Have:
- Familiarity with containerisation and orchestration, such as Docker and Kubernetes
- Experience with distributed task systems and job queues
- Background in data quality monitoring and anomaly detection
- Experience working with search, advertising, or competitive intelligence data
What We Value
- Pragmatic problem-solving in hostile and fast-changing technical environments
- High ownership of systems that run continuously and at scale
- A strong bias toward reliability, correctness, and observability
- Ability to explain complex technical behaviour clearly to non-specialists
- Curiosity about how large platforms evolve their defences and infrastructure
Our Core Values
All Adthenians are expected to align closely with our ‘Core Values’.
What it means...
- Get Shit Done: We're big on taking action, owning our challenges, and finding solutions.
- Freedom with Responsibility: We take charge of results to recognition. We know that our hustle not only moves the needle for the company but also sets us up for personal success.
- Deliver Remarkable Quality: We care about exceeding expectations in the work we do and aim to always do our best work as individuals and as a team.
- Smart & Always Improving: We strive daily to expand our knowledge and become better at what we do.
Meet your teammates
You’ll work closely with:
- Paul Felby - Chief Product & Tech Officer
- Ivan Nikolov - Lead Technical Architect
Senior Python Scraping / Anti-Bot Engineer in London employer: Adthena
Adthena is an exceptional employer that combines the stability of an established company with the dynamic environment of a scaling tech organisation. With a strong focus on employee autonomy, trust-based vacation policies, and bespoke career development plans, we foster a culture of innovation and collaboration. Our remote-first approach allows for flexibility in work arrangements, ensuring that our team can thrive while contributing to our award-winning search intelligence platform.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Senior Python Scraping / Anti-Bot Engineer in London
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Adthena or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to Adthena.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like Adthena.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like Adthena that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Senior Python Scraping / Anti-Bot Engineer in London
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Adthena.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Adthena and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at Adthena
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Adthena uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.
