Software Engineer (SDE 2)

The Carwow Group is driven by a passion for getting people into cars. We are building the go-to destination for car-changing, designed to reach drivers everywhere with our portfolio of automotive brands; Carwow, Auto Express, evo, Driving Electric and Car Buyer.

What started as a simple reviews site is now one of the largest online car-changing destinations in Europe - over 10 million customers have used Carwow to help them buy and sell cars since its inception. Last year we grew over 50% with nearly £3 billion worth of cars bought on site, while £1.8 billion of cars were listed for sale through our Sell My Car service.

In 2024 we acquired Autovia, doubling our audience overnight. Together we now have one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world with over 1.1 billion annual views, sell 1.2 million print copies of our magazines and have an annual web content reach over 350 million.

We are winners of the prestigious Culture 100 award that recognises the most loved and happiest tech companies to work for! We have just raised $52 million in funding led by global venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners to accelerate our growth plans!

As pioneers, we’re always driving for new territory and positive change, so our work as a group is never done. Where others see difficulty, it’s our responsibility to see possibility – building new experiences, launching new titles and listening to drivers.

Being a part of Carwow Group means championing drivers and the automotive industry, acting as a disrupter and never being afraid to fail (but learning fast when we do!). Our team of 500 employees across the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal are revolutionising car-changing and we are fast expanding our mission across every single brand and country we operate in.

As a team, our mission is to create a technology-driven company where we are empowered to use our skills to solve difficult problems and scale the product. To achieve this, we are looking to hire software developers that are passionate about developing simple solutions for complex problems. Successful candidates will work with our team in a full-stack position.

Our tech stack is primarily Ruby on Rails using PostgreSQL, all hosted on Heroku. We use Terraform to manage our infrastructure and encourage teams to be involved in how we deploy and run our code in Production.

You’ll be supported by one of our Engineering Managers who are there to help you with your career progression and ensure that the team you are on is working as well as they can - continuously improving! We have a career progression framework that means you know what is expected of you and how you can progress through our career ladder.

Software engineers at Carwow work on cross-functional product teams of product managers, engineers, designers and data analysts. You will work closely with a Product Manager and a Tech Lead on deciding what features to build for customers, break down and build features with the team, review code, mentor engineers, ensure operational excellence, and share knowledge broadly across the engineering organisation.

We love solving real-world problems! We work quickly, releasing code into production multiple times daily. You’ll see your code go live continuously. You’d be part of a growing team building a platform that will help define the future of car buying.

We’re a curious bunch driven by a common goal of "How can we make it better?" We work hard to ensure our people have the right level of autonomy, support and sense of purpose to really flourish in their careers.

Please note: We know that no candidate will be the perfect match for all we’ve listed in this posting, so we’d encourage you to apply if you feel you’re close to the brief but not an exact match. Time spent in software engineering roles is of course important, but we prioritise attitude, aptitude, and the kind of impact you’ve had over years' experience. Ideally you’ll have:

• A good grasp of Ruby, both plain and with frameworks (e.g. Ruby on Rails)
• Enjoy working within a TDD environment
• Like the idea of working on events-based systems, for example Kafka
• Are comfortable using git or other source control system proficiently
• Have worked in a metrics-driven team and care about the outcomes of your work.
• Are self-driven and take responsibility for product outcomes, doing whatever’s necessary to make things happen
• Enjoy working in distributed teams and working cross-functionally with Product managers, designers, user researchers and other developers
• Write code to be maintained – with good documentation, tests, and structure.
• Are keen to learn continuously, share knowledge, communicate effectively and build a product in close collaboration with others.

You’re not expected to be an expert in all of these technologies and tools, we are happy to support your learning journey. If you’re unsure about any of the above, please apply.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU:

• Fully remote working role, with offices in London, Munich, Madrid, and Porto that you can work from
• 4-5 trips to the London office for social and team bonding events
• Competitive salary
• Matched pension contributions
• Share options
• Vitality Private Healthcare
• Life Assurance
• Monthly coaching sessions with Spill
• Enhanced holiday package, plus Bank Holidays
• 28 days annual leave
• 1 day for your wedding
• 1 day off when you move house
• For your third year anniversary, get 30 days of annual leave per year
• For your tenth year anniversary, get 35 days of annual leave per year
• Option to buy 3 extra days of holiday per year
• Work from abroad for a month
• Inclusive parental, partner and shared parental leave, fertility treatment and pregnancy loss policies
• Bubble childcare support and discounted nanny fees
• The latest tech (Macbook or Surface)
• Up to £500/€550 home office allowance
• Generous learning and development budget
• Regular social events
• Refer a friend, get paid.
• Lunch & learns and Carwow Classrooms

Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We welcome those with alternative identities, backgrounds, and experiences to apply for this position. We make recruiting decisions based on experience, skills and potential, so all our applicants are treated fairly and equally.