At a Glance
- Tasks: Design and build high-performance backend services for Spotify's experimentation platform.
- Company: Join Spotify's innovative Confidence team, a startup within the company.
- Benefits: Flexible work options, competitive salary, and a focus on inclusivity.
- Why this job: Make a real impact on how millions experience music and podcasts.
- Qualifications: Strong Java/JVM skills and experience with distributed systems required.
- Other info: Collaborative environment with opportunities for personal and professional growth.
The predicted salary is between 36000 - 60000 £ per year.
Think it, build it, ship it, tweak it - that’s our rhythm. Spotify’s Confidence team is a startup inside Spotify, building the next-generation experimentation platform used by hundreds of internal teams - and now being prepared for external customers. You’ll join a small, senior crew of backend, data, and research engineers who care deeply about correctness, performance, and design. We move fast and carefully: ship small, reversible changes with strong safeguards, measure impact, and iterate. We operate multi-tenant, high-scale services where reliability and developer experience are first-class. You’ll build, run, and refine these systems end-to-end, partnering with Product, Data Science, and our Customer Success team to turn real-world signals into product improvements. We keep process light and hold a high bar for ownership and impact.
What You'll Do
- Ship and iterate quickly
- Design, build, and operate high-throughput, multi-tenant backend services for assignment, data pipelines, and metrics in the experimentation domain
- Own gRPC/protobuf APIs and data contracts: evolve schemas safely, plan deprecations and migrations, and protect compatibility
- Drive reliability: define SLOs and error budgets, improve p95/p99 latency, reduce alert noise, and lead on-call incident response and postmortems
- Level-up observability (tracing/metrics/logging) and performance; profile and optimize for cost and scale in GCP
- Collaborate with the Customer Success team to transform recurring issues into runbooks, tooling, SDK/docs fixes, and productizable improvements
- Contribute primarily on the backend (Java/JVM, gRPC) while collaborating across the stack and with data warehousing integrations
- Write RFCs and drive impact in an asynchronous and distributed team proactively
Who You Are
- You are a backend engineer with strong Java/JVM fundamentals and experience building and operating distributed systems at scale.
- You are comfortable owning production: on-call rotations, incident triage, debugging across services, and driving durable fixes.
- You are product-minded and pragmatic, with a bias to ship incrementally under ambiguity.
- You are comfortable with lightweight process, high trust, and clear written alignment.
- You are experienced with API/SDK design (gRPC/protobuf), versioning strategies, and developer-experience trade-offs.
- You are fluent with modern cloud/platform tooling (preferably GCP: GKE, Pub/Sub, managed storage).
- You have excellent written communication and async collaboration skills, and you are comfortable influencing across org boundaries.
- You have an experimentation background, or you show strong interest and ability to learn quickly.
- You may have bonus experience with data warehousing beyond BigQuery, or with experimentation/feature flag vendors.
Where You'll Be
- This role is based in London
- We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! There will be some in person meetings, but still allows for flexibility to work from home
Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.
At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know - we’re here to support you in any way we can.
Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be passionate about these creators. Everything we do is driven by our love for music and podcasting. Today, we are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service.
Senior Backend Engineer - Experimentation Platform in London employer: Spotify
Contact Detail:
Spotify Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Senior Backend Engineer - Experimentation Platform in London
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to current or former employees at Spotify through LinkedIn or other platforms. A friendly chat can give you insider info and maybe even a referral, which can really boost your chances.
✨Tip Number 2
Prepare for the technical interview by brushing up on your Java/JVM skills and distributed systems knowledge. Practice coding challenges and system design questions to show off your expertise and problem-solving abilities.
✨Tip Number 3
Show your passion for experimentation! Be ready to discuss any relevant projects or experiences where you've implemented or contributed to experimentation processes. This will demonstrate your alignment with Spotify's mission.
✨Tip Number 4
Don’t forget to apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen. Plus, it shows you’re serious about joining the team and ready to dive into the Spotify culture.
We think you need these skills to ace Senior Backend Engineer - Experimentation Platform in London
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Your Passion for Experimentation: When writing your application, let us see your enthusiasm for experimentation and how it drives your work. Share examples of projects where you've iterated quickly and made impactful changes, as this aligns perfectly with our rhythm.
Highlight Your Backend Expertise: Make sure to showcase your strong Java/JVM fundamentals and experience with distributed systems. We want to know about the high-throughput services you've built and how you've tackled challenges in production environments.
Communicate Clearly and Concisely: Since we value excellent written communication, ensure your application is clear and to the point. Use straightforward language to describe your experiences and skills, making it easy for us to understand your background and fit for the role.
Apply Through Our Website: We encourage you to apply directly through our website. This way, you can ensure your application reaches us without any hiccups, and you'll have access to all the latest updates about the position and our team!
How to prepare for a job interview at Spotify
✨Know Your Tech Stack
Make sure you’re well-versed in Java/JVM and gRPC/protobuf. Brush up on your knowledge of distributed systems and be ready to discuss how you've built and operated them at scale. This will show that you can hit the ground running!
✨Demonstrate Your Problem-Solving Skills
Prepare to share specific examples of how you've tackled production issues, especially around incident triage and debugging. Highlight your experience with defining SLOs and improving latency, as this aligns perfectly with what they’re looking for.
✨Show Your Collaborative Spirit
Since the role involves working closely with Product, Data Science, and Customer Success teams, be ready to discuss how you’ve collaborated across different teams in the past. Emphasise your communication skills and how you’ve influenced decisions in a distributed environment.
✨Be Ready to Discuss Experimentation
Given the focus on experimentation, prepare to talk about your background in this area or your eagerness to learn. Share any relevant experiences or projects where you’ve used experimentation to drive product improvements, as this will resonate well with the team.