Staff Backend Engineer - Data Platform

Depop is the community-powered circular fashion marketplace where anyone can buy, sell and discover desirable secondhand fashion. With a community of over 35 million users, Depop is on a mission to make fashion circular, redefining fashion consumption. Founded in 2011, the company is headquartered in London, with offices in New York and Manchester, and in 2021 became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Etsy.

Our mission is to make fashion circular and to create an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome, no matter who they are or where they’re from. Just as our platform connects people globally, we believe our workplace should reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. We thrive on the power of different perspectives and experiences, knowing they drive innovation and bring us closer to our users. 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.

We’re continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have. If, due to a disability, you need adjustments to complete the application, please let us know by sending an email with your name, the role to which you would like to apply, and the type of support you need to complete the application to adjustments@depop.com.

Role: We’re looking for a Staff Backend Engineer – Data Platform to be a key technical leader within the teams responsible for Depop’s data platform. You’ll drive the technical vision and implementation for our foundational data platform — from experimentation, event ingestion pipelines to our data lake, governance frameworks, and data observability and real-time analytics capabilities. You will work closely with data scientists, machine learning engineers, backend teams, and product leaders, providing deep technical expertise to ensure our data systems are scalable, secure, observable, and enable innovation across the company.

Responsibilities:

• Partner with stakeholders across Product, Data, and Engineering to translate strategic goals into well-architected, scalable platform capabilities.
• Drive the technical design and implementation of core data platform components, providing hands-on coding and architectural leadership.
• Define and evolve the technical roadmap for Depop’s modern data platform, ensuring reliable and scalable analytics.
• Champion engineering excellence, setting high technical standards and advocating for best practices in system design, maintainability, performance, and privacy.
• Lead efforts in data observability, governance, and privacy-by-design principles, ensuring their robust implementation across the organization.
• Mentor and coach engineers, elevating the technical capabilities of the team and fostering a culture of technical excellence.
• Identify and address complex technical challenges and bottlenecks, proposing and implementing effective solutions.

Qualifications:

• Proven experience as a Staff Engineer or equivalent senior technical leadership role in data infrastructure or platform at scale, ideally in a consumer or marketplace environment.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems and modern data ecosystems — including extensive experience with Databricks, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Apache Beam and DBT.
• Demonstrated success in designing, building, and operating data platforms at scale, encompassing both batch processing and real-time streaming architectures.
• Expertise in data warehousing concepts, advanced ETL/ELT processes, and analytics engineering best practices.
• Exceptional programming skills, particularly in Python, Scala, or Java, and deep expertise with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Extensive experience working with privacy-sensitive datasets and implementing robust data observability and governance frameworks.
• A strong technical background with a track record of hands-on architecture and development of complex data systems.
• Ability to think strategically and pragmatically: you can define long-term technical strategies and execute rapidly.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills; you’re comfortable influencing technical direction and aligning diverse stakeholders across the organization.

Bonus points:

• Experience with machine learning infrastructure or ML Ops practices.
• Familiarity with event-driven architectures in a mobile-first product environment.
• Prior work in fashion, marketplaces, or sustainability-driven tech.

Additional Information:

• Health + Mental Wellbeing: PMI and cash plan healthcare access with Bupa, subsidised counselling and coaching with Self Space, Cycle to Work scheme with options from Evans or the Green Commute Initiative, Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for 24/7 confidential support, Mental Health First Aiders across the business for support and signposting.
• Work/Life Balance: 25 days annual leave with option to carry over up to 5 days, 1 company-wide day off per quarter, Impact hours: Up to 2 days additional paid leave per year for volunteering, Fully paid 4 week sabbatical after completion of 5 years of consecutive service with Depop.
• Flexible Working: MyMode hybrid-working model with Flex, Office Based, and Remote options *role dependant, all offices are dog-friendly, ability to work abroad for 4 weeks per year in UK tax treaty countries.
• Family Life: 18 weeks of paid parental leave for full-time regular employees, IVF leave, shared parental leave, and paid emergency parent/carer leave.
• Learn + Grow: Budgets for conferences, learning subscriptions, and more, mentorship and programmes to upskill employees.
• Your Future: Life Insurance (financial compensation of 3x your salary), pension matching up to 6% of qualifying earnings.
• Depop Extras: Employees enjoy free shipping on their Depop sales within the UK, special milestones are celebrated with gifts and rewards!