Senior Backend Engineer - AdTech

Responsibilities

• Partner with Product, Data Science, and Engineering teams to design and build scalable AdTech systems that support ad delivery, ranking, and measurement.
• Develop and maintain backend services that operate at high scale and low latency, supporting real‑time decision making.
• Contribute to the design of event‑driven systems and data pipelines that power experimentation and performance insights.
• Own your services end‑to‑end, including development, deployment, monitoring, and incident response.
• Write high‑quality, maintainable code and contribute to improving engineering standards, performance, and reliability.
• Participate in architecture discussions, helping evolve systems to support future product and business needs.
• Collaborate with engineers across teams to tackle complex problems and deliver impactful features.
• Support a culture of continuous improvement through code reviews, post‑mortems, and knowledge sharing.
• Mentor and support other engineers, contributing to the growth of the team.

Qualifications

• Experience building and operating scalable backend systems, ideally in a consumer or marketplace environment.
• Strong programming skills in Scala (or willingness to learn), Java, or similar backend languages.
• Experience designing and working with distributed systems and event‑driven architectures.
• Familiarity with messaging systems such as Kafka or RabbitMQ.
• Experience working with relational or non‑relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL, DynamoDB).
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and modern DevOps practices (CI/CD).
• Strong problem‑solving skills and the ability to work independently while collaborating effectively with others.
• Good communication skills and the ability to work cross‑functionally with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

Bonus Points

• Experience working in AdTech, recommendations, ranking, or experimentation platforms.
• Worked with high‑throughput systems handling real‑time data or decisioning.
• Experience in eCommerce, marketplaces, or data‑driven product environments.
• Familiar with infrastructure‑as‑code tools such as Terraform.

Benefits

• Health + Mental Wellbeing: PMI and cash plan healthcare access with Bupa, subsidised counseling and coaching with Self Space, Cycle to Work scheme with options from Evans or the Green Commute Initiative, Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for 24/7 confidential support, Mental Health First Aiders across the business for support and signposting.
• Work/Life Balance: 25 days annual leave with option to carry over up to 5 days, 1 company‑wide day off per quarter, up to 2 days additional paid leave per year for volunteering, fully paid 4‑week sabbatical after 5 years of consecutive service with Depop.
• Flexible Working: MyMode hybrid‑working model with Flex, Office Based, and Remote options (role dependent), all offices are dog‑friendly, ability to work abroad for 4 weeks per year in UK tax treaty countries.
• Family Life: 18 weeks paid parental leave for full‑time regular employees, IVF leave, shared parental leave, and paid emergency parent/carer leave.
• Learn + Grow: Budgets for conferences, learning subscriptions, and more; mentorship and programmes to upskill employees.
• Your Future: Life Insurance (financial compensation of 3x your salary), Pension matching up to 6% of qualifying earnings, Depop Extras: free shipping on Depop sales within the UK, special milestones celebrated with gifts and rewards.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, providing employment opportunities without regard to age, ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy or maternity, marriage and civil partnership, or any other protected status. We’re continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have.