Senior Backend Engineer

Raylo is the subscription infrastructure for the world's leading electronics brands, powering the circular economy by making devices more accessible, affordable, and flexible for consumers and businesses. Economic incentives, environmental pressures, and regulatory shifts are driving a global move toward the circular economy. Consumers and businesses are already moving away from rigid ownership models in favour of more flexible, affordable access. Yet while big tech has embedded subscriptions in everything from music to software to storage, the $1.5 trillion electronic device market remains deeply underserved.

We enable the world’s leading electronics brands to shift from single-use to circular, customer‑centric business models. We’re at £70m ARR, profitable, growing fast, with 200,000+ active subscriptions across consumers and small businesses. Customers trust us too, with a 4.5/5 Trustpilot rating from more than 20,000 reviews. For customers, the experience is simple: subscribe to a device, get support throughout, upgrade when you want, and return it when you’re done. Behind that sits a sophisticated fintech platform powering device subscriptions end to end: credit and fraud decisioning, lifecycle operations, and the financing engine that lets brands offer subscriptions without using their own balance sheet. No one else has built the full infrastructure to run electronics subscriptions at scale.

Our platform has two sides. Raylo.com marketplace gives consumers and small businesses access to premium tech from the world’s leading electronics brands. Raylo Pay is our embedded product, enabling brands such as PlayStation and LG to launch subscription journeys directly through their own DTC and ecommerce channels. The impact of our circular model is big. We cut emissions per device by around 50% compared to buy-and-discard. We’re B Corp certified, backed by Macquarie, NatWest and Channel 4 Ventures, and recognised by Tech Nation’s Future Fifty.

AI is changing what small, ambitious teams can build. Companies that embrace it will define the next decade. Raylo is uniquely placed to benefit. We combine proprietary technology and data with the orchestration of physical assets, operating across credit, fraud, pricing, logistics, refurbishment, resale and customer care. With AI improving every cycle, our moat deepens with scale. At Raylo, AI is woven into how we work every day. We don’t ration access or hedge our bets. Our people use the best models and tools, and we expect them to do things that weren’t possible a year ago. Processes that used to be good enough are being rebuilt. Teams are replacing spreadsheets with bespoke tooling, and anyone can query our data layer in plain English and get a real answer in seconds. We give every team their own hackathon: a chance to step back, start with a blank sheet, and ask: if we were starting today, how would we do this? The more we automate, the more human judgement matters. AI gives people back time, and we expect them to spend it on the things no model can replicate: conversations, trust, craft and team judgement. We hire to a high bar. You’ll work with people who push you, raise your game and expect you to do the same. We want every person at Raylo to do the best work of their lives, and enjoy doing it.

Our Core Values

• Be deeply curious – We thrive on innovation through diverse approaches, views, and people.
• Walk in your customer’s shoes – To build the best products and make the best decisions for the long term, we must figure out what our customers need, not just what they want.
• Focus and execute – We have a big vision, but we believe in nailing the most important problems first.
• Be gritty – Only gritty teams succeed. Our individual ownership, passion, and perseverance mean we’re a team through thick and thin.

We’re hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to help us build and scale our backend systems as we continue to grow our customer base and expand the features of our product. You’ll be joining a collaborative and talented team, working cross‑functionally with engineers, product managers, and commercial teams to create real impact across the business. You’ll play a key role in designing and delivering high‑quality backend features that support both customer‑facing journeys and internal business systems, such as supply chain and operations. Your work will directly contribute to our ability to serve more customers, more efficiently – and will help drive growth across our core platform. You’ll be joining a team that values autonomy, fast iteration, and tackling meaningful challenges. You’ll have the freedom to experiment, propose new ideas, and take ownership of projects from concept to deployment. This is a chance to do some of the best work of your career in a supportive, no‑ego environment.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the development of backend features that support our customers and internal teams.
• Design scalable solutions that take the end user into account – not just the backend.
• Collaborate closely with other backend, frontend, and mobile engineers, as well as cross‑functional stakeholders.
• Drive projects through ambiguity and bring clarity where needed, taking initiative to move things forward.
• Contribute to the team’s technical direction, including design discussions, code reviews, and mentoring.
• Participate in our engineering rota, helping to investigate and resolve production issues.
• Deploy your own code frequently – we empower engineers to take ownership and ship often, rather than having a separate devops team.
• Support a culture of learning, pairing, and curiosity to continuously raise the technical bar and succeed together.

You’ll Succeed With

• 5+ years of hands‑on experience with Ruby on Rails in a production environment.
• A strong track record of building and shipping backend systems at pace, ideally in a high‑growth startup or scale‑up.
• Experience leading projects with multiple stakeholders and engineers involved.
• Experience or interest in GraphQL is a plus.
• A collaborative, product‑focused mindset – you care about solving real customer problems, not just technical ones.
• Strong communication and the ability to bring clarity to complex or ambiguous problems.
• Proactive curiosity – you ask questions, challenge assumptions, and continuously improve your craft.

Benefits

• Stock options for all employees.
• L&D budget to support the skills you value.
• Hybrid working model – 3 set days in the London Bridge Office (Monday, Wednesday & Thursday).
• 33 days off, your way – 25 days + 8 bank holidays with full flexibility to use on the days that mean the most to you.
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, adoption or shared parental leave, if you've been with us for 12 months.
• Workplace nursery scheme for major cost savings.

Diversity & Inclusion

At Raylo, we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. We welcome people of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, believing they make us stronger.