Senior Backend Engineer - Tech Lead

Engineers are the backbone of all we do at Pleo. Without these wildly brilliant people, we don’t have a thing. We are looking for experienced Backend Engineers to join one of our cross-functional product teams. As a Senior, we trust you to be an expert in server-side languages. Kotlin is 90%+ of our micro-services, so proficiency here is hugely beneficial.

Beyond writing excellent, well-tested, maintainable code, you also practice the other aspects of being a strong technical leader. You give insightful PR reviews, are a trusted technical partner to teammates, know when/how to prioritise tech debt, proactively jump into P1/P2 incidents, lead post-mortems and can generally upskill and unblock the team around you. But it’s not just about being a master of your craft; it’s about ownership and taking the lead on large projects. These could be new product launches, managing tricky migrations, and designing and building new microservices or components.

As a scale-up, we sometimes need to shift focus. When that happens, your role is to be a steady hand to help the team navigate ambiguity and manage technical change. Mostly, we’re looking for someone others can look up to and learn from. You’ll set the standard for the team, not just with your code but in how you work and the culture you promote. At Pleo, our people and our culture are very important to us, and we value trust and transparency like you wouldn’t believe.

As we continue to grow at Pleo, we’re excited to welcome talented Backend Engineers to join us across our various domains, including Platform and Services, Partnerships, SMB, Credit, and more. While the specific team you’ll be working with will be decided later, our hiring process remains streamlined and consistent across all roles. This allows us to evaluate your skills and potential, ensuring a great fit for the team you eventually join. No matter which domain you land in, you will be part of a dynamic, collaborative environment where you’ll tackle complex challenges, build reusable components, and contribute to shaping the future of our product.

And finally, we want to enjoy what we do and who we are working with because duh.

• You know your way around Server-side languages (we mostly use Kotlin, with few services in TypeScript)
• Cloud environments/ distributed systems/ microservices (AWS, Google Cloud, Kubernetes)
• Relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL)
• Testing frameworks (Cypress, JUnit, Testcontainers)
• Observability and monitoring (Datadog)
• DevOps culture and tools (GitHub Actions, Gradle, Terraform)

Your colleagues would say you:

• Work in English with ease (it’s our company language)
• Never stop being curious and love learning about new languages/ frameworks/ working styles
• Have experience solving complex technical challenges at scale
• Ensure a high bar for quality and reliability within your team
• Coach others to help them develop as engineers
• Advocate for a more thorough code review process than a quick scroll to the bottom of the page and a “LGTM!”
• You don’t just write code; you help to design the overall solution
• Are sought after within your team for help in solving challenging problems
• You’re a force multiplier within your team - your work enables other engineers to do be even better
• Able to raise and describe technical debt faced by your team. And then able to propose a solution or path forward.

Show me the benefits!

• Your own Pleo card (no more out-of-pocket spending!)
• Lunch is on us - with catering in our Lisbon, Copenhagen and London offices or a monthly lunch allowance paid directly together with your salary in other markets
• Private health insurance to ensure you’re fit in body and mind to do your best work
• For this team we offer flexibility/remote working options
• Option to purchase 5 additional days of holiday through a salary sacrifice
• We’re trialling MyndUp to give our employees access to free mental health and wellbeing support with great success so far
• Access to LinkedIn Learning - acquire new skills, stay abreast of industry trends and fuel your personal and professional development continuously
• Paid parental leave - we want to make sure that we’re supportive of families and help you feel that you don’t have to compromise your family due to work

The annual salary for this position varies based on your location:

• Spain/Portugal: 87,000€-93,000€
• United Kingdom: £79,000-£83,000

We’re happy to share more about our approach to pay and this range during your first call with us!