Senior II Full-Stack Engineer (back-end heavy)

Location: London

Employment Type: Full time

Location Type: Hybrid

Department: Engineering

We power people’s progress. At Preply, we’re all about creating life-changing learning experiences. We help people discover the magic of the perfect tutor, craft a personalised learning journey, and stay motivated to keep growing. Our approach is human-led, tech-enabled - and it’s creating real impact.

As a category-defining company, we’re shaping what the future of learning looks like at global scale. Every Preply lesson sparks change, fuels ambition, and drives progress that matters. Joining Preply means helping define the future of education at global scale, and building something that truly matters for millions of people, every day.

Meet the team! Our team builds scalable, resilient products using Python/Django on the backend and React on the frontend, all with one goal in mind: creating a smooth, meaningful experience for our learners and tutors. We're proudly tech-agnostic; great engineers come from all kinds of backgrounds. Whether you’ve worked with Java/Spring, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Scala/Play, PHP, or Go, you’ll feel right at home here. Python experience isn’t required.

What you’ll be doing:

• Work in a cross-functional team alongside Product Managers, Product Designers, UX Writers, Data Analysts, Engineering Managers, Engineers, and other stakeholders to deliver meaningful outcomes for learners and tutors.
• Combine hands‑on execution with technical leadership, helping shape both product direction and engineering excellence through initiatives that drive customer and business impact.
• Back-end Development: Design, build, and evolve scalable backend systems using Python/Django, driving architectural decisions, creating new services, and owning critical integrations that support Preply’s growth.
• UI Development: Develop and evolve frontend experiences in React/Typescript, contributing to experimentation frameworks and helping establish frontend engineering best practices.
• Implementation & Ownership: Lead complex initiatives from discovery through deployment, taking ownership of solutions throughout their lifecycle and balancing immediate product needs with long-term sustainability.
• Raising the Bar: Drive engineering excellence through mentorship, architectural reviews, and the adoption of best practices across frontend and backend development.
• Data-Driven Product Development: Partner closely with Product, Data, and UX teammates to identify opportunities, validate hypotheses, and maximize customer value through experimentation and measurable outcomes.
• System Design: Shape architectural direction for complex systems, making technical decisions that improve scalability, reliability, maintainability, and developer productivity.
• Prioritisation & Decision-Making: Navigate ambiguity, evaluate trade-offs, and align technical investments with business objectives and customer impact.
• Technical Leadership: Influence technical direction beyond your immediate scope, collaborating with engineers, managers, and stakeholders to drive alignment and successful delivery.
• Chasing Excellence: Continuously raise the quality bar through craftsmanship, curiosity, continuous learning, and a commitment to helping others grow.

What you need to succeed:

• Full-Stack Expertise: This is a backend-heavy full-stack role, with approximately 85% of the work focused on backend development and 15% on frontend development.
• Scalable Systems & Architecture: Experience designing and evolving large-scale web applications, including well-designed APIs, distributed systems, high-volume data flows, and scalable architectural patterns.
• Technical Leadership: Demonstrated ability to influence technical decisions, drive engineering best practices, and contribute to architectural direction within and beyond your immediate team.
• Product & Business Impact: Strong product mindset with the ability to translate ambiguous business challenges into scalable technical solutions.
• Proactive Problem-Solving: Comfortable navigating ambiguity and independently solving complex technical and product challenges.
• Ownership & Accountability: High level of self-organization, ownership, and responsibility, with a track record of driving initiatives from concept through delivery.
• Collaboration & Communication: Excellent collaboration, stakeholder management, and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across engineering, product, design, and data functions.
• Mentorship & Engineering Excellence: Experience mentoring engineers, contributing to code and design reviews, and helping raise the engineering bar through knowledge sharing and technical leadership.
• Operational Excellence: Understanding of observability, reliability, monitoring, and operational best practices.
• Deep, hands‑on expertise in AI tools, especially in agentic AI SDLC.

Why you’ll love it at Preply:

• An open, collaborative, dynamic and diverse culture.
• A generous monthly allowance for lessons on Preply.com, Learning & Development budget and time off for your self-development.
• A competitive financial package with equity, leave allowance and health insurance.
• Access to free mental health support platforms.
• The opportunity to shape the lives of learners and tutors through language learning and teaching in 175 countries (and counting!).

Our Principles:

• Care to change the world - We are passionate about our work and care deeply about its impact to be life changing.
• Keep perfecting - To create an outstanding customer experience, we focus on simplicity, smoothness, and enjoyment.
• Now is the time - In a fast-paced world, it matters how quickly we act.
• Disciplined execution - What makes us disciplined is the excellence in our execution.
• Dive deep - We leverage business acumen and curiosity to investigate disparities between numbers and stories.
• Growth mindset - We proactively seek growth opportunities and believe today's best performance becomes tomorrow's starting point.
• Raise the bar - We raise our performance standards continuously.
• Challenge, disagree and commit - We value open and candid communication.
• One Preply - We prioritize collaboration, inclusion, and the success of our team over personal ambitions.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Preply.com is committed to creating an inclusive environment where people of diverse backgrounds can thrive.