Backend Engineer, Platform in London

Overview

Depop is looking for a skilled Software Engineer within the Platform Pillar to work on our core APIs and services, focusing on the backend systems that support the entire marketplace.

This role involves designing, building, and maintaining critical services that serve millions of users, and shaping the long‑term technical direction of our platform.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams (Engineering, Product, Security, Data) to understand problems and design effective solutions.
• Produce high‑quality, maintainable code for services used by millions of users.
• Own platform and product development from discovery to implementation.
• Contribute to high‑level architectural decisions for the core application and associated services.
• Improve scalability, reliability, observability, and operational safety of critical backend systems.
• Work on foundational platform capabilities: backend systems, service‑to‑service communication, authentication, infrastructure architecture, messaging, database scalability, deployment tooling, and internal engineering enablement.
• Evolve the core application to remain safe, performant, and fit for future needs.
• Communicate clearly with stakeholders, translating technical complexity into shared understanding.
• Support production incident management, debugging, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
• Embrace agile methodologies, user‑centred thinking, and a pragmatic approach to solving real business and engineering problems.
• Participate in post‑mortems, architecture reviews, engineering guild sessions, and technical strategy discussions.
• Collaborate daily with fellow engineers to solve complex problems and write high‑quality code.
• Mentor and support the growth of colleagues.
• Own your code, workflows, services, and data throughout their lifecycle.

Qualifications

• Must Haves
• Solid software engineering experience with Scala and Python stack.
• Strong backend engineering background: designing, building, testing, and operating production services.
• Willingness to work across multiple paradigms and languages, including backend, platform, and data‑oriented work.
• Strong technical and non‑technical communication skills.
• Proficiency in unit and integration testing.
• Experience with relational or non‑relational databases.
• Experience with Kubernetes or similar container orchestration.
• Experience on production systems where reliability, scalability, and maintainability are critical.
• Proactive problem‑solving skills with the ability to seek guidance or collaborate with peers.
• Desired Experience
• Writing high‑quality backend code in Scala, Type Script, Python, or another JVM language.
• Experience with large, business‑critical backend or platform systems.
• Experience with Postgre SQL, My SQL, or Dynamo DB.
• Experience building scalable web applications or backend systems handling significant traffic and data volume.
• Experience improving reliability, scalability, observability, and operational maturity in production systems.
• Experience in a Dev Ops culture: CI/CD pipelines, observability, incident response, and production ownership.
• Experience with platform capabilities supporting other engineering teams (shared services, deployment tooling, infrastructure abstractions, or internal developer workflows).
• A product‑oriented and platform‑mindful approach focusing on solving real engineering and business problems.
• Bonus: experience with the Typelevel stack, Play Framework, platform engineering internal developer platforms, core infrastructure systems, large monoliths, service extraction, or modernisation of legacy backend systems; e Commerce or marketplace platforms; event‑driven architectures (Kafka); AWS infrastructure (Terraform); data engineering; service‑to‑service authentication, internal platform security, or cloud cost management; enabling AI platform capabilities or safe‑AI guardrails.

Benefits

• Health & mental wellbeing: PMI, cash plan, Bupa healthcare access, subsidised counselling and coaching, Self Space.
• Cycle to Work scheme, Green Commute Initiative, and employee assistance programme.
• 25 days of annual leave, with carry‑over of up to 5 days.
• Impact hours: up to 2 days extra paid leave per year for volunteering.
• Fully paid 4‑week sabbatical after 5 years of consecutive service.
• Flexible working: My Mode hybrid‑working model, flex, office‑based, or remote options (*role‑dependent).
• Dog‑friendly offices.
• Family life leave: 20 weeks paid parental leave for birth parents, 12 weeks for non‑birth parents, IVF leave, shared parental leave, paid emergency parent/carer leave.
• Learning & growth: bi‑annual development chats, yearly performance reviews, yearly learning budget.
• Life insurance: 3× salary, pension matching up to 6% with Aviva.
• Depop extras: in‑office Depop shop, packing station with free delivery, special milestones gifts & rewards.

We are an equal‑opportunity employer and welcome applicants of all backgrounds. If you need adjustments to the application process due to a disability, please email .

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