Back End Engineer - Decision Tech Product Team in London

Hybrid in London, UK

We are looking for a Back End Engineer to join our Decision Tech Product Team. This role is critical in allowing us to offer flexible loan options and provide support to thousands of businesses. You will help design, build, and maintain a set of orchestrated services that will serve our primary business needs and core product functionality as we scale.

The company:

Small businesses move fast. Opportunities often don’t wait, and cash flow pressures can appear overnight. To keep going and growing, SMEs need finance that’s as flexible and responsive as they are. That’s why we built iwoca. Our smart technology, data science, and five-star customer service ensure business owners can act with the speed, confidence, and control they need, exactly when it’s needed. We’ve already cleared the way for 100,000 businesses with more than £4 billion in funding. Our passionate team is driven to help even more SMEs succeed through access to better finance and other services that make running a business easier. Our ultimate mission is to support one million SMEs in their defining moments, creating lasting impact for the communities and economies they drive.

The team:

The team owns and optimises the systems that generate loan offers for new customers – including pricing, credit limits, and other offer terms – and chooses which offers to present to the customer. You will join a build team of five people consisting of data scientists, strategy analysts, and software engineers, all aiming to improve our area of the funnel.

The role:

As a Back End Engineer, you will design, build, and own the high-performance services that execute our lending strategy. You will get to:

• Exercise autonomy: Own projects end to end, from scoping and design to execution. Lead multi-engineer projects, coordinating with analysts, product managers, and other stakeholders.
• Drive impact: Enhance our offerings to meet the needs of repeat customers, improving their access to tailored lending solutions.
• Shape our systems: Design and maintain robust, flexible, and maintainable systems to ensure scalability and fast-paced development.
• Learn through iteration: Embrace a culture of experimentation, using trial and error to uncover insights, refine approaches, and grow your technical and strategic skills.
• Apply continuous deployment: Work iteratively, supported by high test coverage, and contribute to the team’s frequent deployment cycles (averaging more than once per day).
• Unlock data-driven decision-making: Use hypothesis testing and metrics such as issuance and profitability to iterate and optimise our approach.

The projects:

• Optimise and deploy live decision models: Collaborate with data scientists to reduce the runtime of optimisation models, ensuring timely decisions and low-load times for customers. This involves deep dives into performance bottlenecks and implementing efficient solutions.
• Redesign offer generation architecture: Evolve and consolidate our offer generation services, leveraging your expertise to refactor and simplify the existing architecture. This investment will enhance scalability and maintainability, reflecting iwoca’s growth and modern approach to business loans.
• Develop robust analytics infrastructure: Build and enhance data models and pipelines to ensure accurate and timely data collections. This will involve designing and implementing data solutions that empower the strategy and analytics team to conduct split tests and make data-driven decisions.

The requirements:

• Essential: Proficiency in Python with a strong background in back-end engineering. Experience designing, building, and managing relational databases. Experience designing, building, and maintaining API endpoints. Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate business needs into clear, effective technical solutions.
• Bonus: Experience with Django and PostgreSQL. Understanding of DevOps practices, including containerisation and CI/CD. A strong numerical or technical background, with a degree in maths, physics, computer science, engineering, or relevant industry experience.

The salary:

We expect to pay from £65,000 – £80,000 for this role. But, we are open-minded, so definitely include your salary goals with your application. We routinely benchmark salaries against market rates and run quarterly salary and performance reviews.

The culture:

At iwoca, we prioritise a culture of learning, growth, and support, and invest in the professional development of our team members. We value diversity in thought and skill, and encourage you to explore new areas of interest to help us improve our products and services.

The offices:

We put a lot of effort into making iwoca a great place to work:

• Offices in London, Leeds, Berlin, and Frankfurt with plenty of drinks and snacks.
• Events and community-led groups, including running groups, padel, and monthly ping-pong and pool competitions.

The benefits:

• Flexible working hours.
• Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership.
• A private GP service (separate from Vitality) for you, your partner, and your dependents.
• 25 days’ holiday per year, an extra day off for your birthday, the option to buy or sell an additional five days of annual leave, and unlimited unpaid leave.
• A one-month, fully paid sabbatical after four years.
• Instant access to external counselling and therapy sessions for team members that need emotional or mental health support.
• 3% Pension contributions on total earnings.
• An employee equity incentive scheme.
• Generous parental leave and a nursery tax benefit scheme to help you save money.
• Electric car scheme and cycle to work scheme.
• Two company retreats a year: we’ve been to France, Italy, Spain, and further afield.

And to make sure we all keep learning, we offer:

• A learning and development budget for everyone.
• Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers.
• Access to learning platforms like Treehouse.

Useful links: iwoca benefits & policies. Interview welcome pack.