Backend Product Engineer

Yonder combines credit and debit in one membership that’s fair, flexible and actually enjoyable. No jargon. No dusty points system. Just rewards that actually feel rewarding, from bao to beer to a boarding pass. The engineering team sits at the heart of the company; we work in squads alongside product and design, and closely with risk, compliance, operations and partnerships.

We’re looking for a Product Engineer to join our backend team. You’ll work on the systems that sit behind every Yonder membership: what happens when a member taps their card, our in-house core banking platform, and the rewards engine that makes Yonder different. You’ll be joining a small engineering team that owns everything end to end: the development lifecycle, system architecture and the infrastructure it all runs on. That means the work you do has a real, visible impact, and you’ll have a hand in shaping how engineering at Yonder evolves. Your home is the backend, but we don’t believe in rigid boundaries. Everyone here is encouraged to contribute wherever the problem takes them, whether that’s infrastructure, the mobile app or the webapp.

What you’ll do

• Build: Develop production-grade backend services powering payments, core banking and rewards. Build event-driven features with Kafka and integrate with internal services and external partners. Ship features end to end, from concept through to live deployment, with measurable member impact.
• Design: Contribute to the architecture of our distributed microservices, with an eye on resilience, scalability and maintainability. Design APIs and data flows that work cleanly with our mobile app. Take part in lightweight architecture reviews to share knowledge and shape technical decisions.
• Operate: Look after the services you build in production: monitor, troubleshoot and improve them. Work on our cloud infrastructure, containerised workloads and CI/CD pipelines. Apply good practice for reliability, observability and security across the stack.
• Collaborate: Work closely with product and design to deliver features our members love. Pair with other engineers, review code and help raise the team’s technical bar.

Our Tech Stack

• Backend: Scala microservices on the Typelevel ecosystem (Http4s, Cats Effect)
• Data & messaging: AlloyDB (Postgres), managed Kafka
• Infrastructure: GCP, GKE (Kubernetes), Docker
• Frontend: React Native mobile app, Next.js webapp
• AI tooling: AI coding tools are widely used and actively encouraged. Our engineers use Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and Codex day to day.

You're a great fit if you

• Have backend experience in production: You’ve built and run services that real users depend on, ideally in a JVM language (Java, Kotlin, Scala).
• Are curious about functional programming: You like immutable data, strongly typed APIs and code that’s easy to reason about. You don’t need Scala experience; we’ll help you learn it.
• Have worked with event-driven systems: You have experience with Kafka or similar, and understand how event-driven architectures behave in practice.
• Understand distributed systems: You’re comfortable building and operating microservices.
• Own quality: You see automated testing as part of building, not an afterthought.
• Use AI tools well: You use AI to move faster, and you apply the judgement to know when its output is wrong.
• Focus on the customer: You care more about solving member problems than about any particular technology.
• Are comfortable with ambiguity: You’re happy setting your own direction when the path isn’t fully defined.
• Take ownership: You drive work from idea to delivery in a fast-paced startup.
• Have a growth mindset: You’re eager to learn, including parts of the stack you haven’t touched before.

You won’t be a great fit if you

• Prefer large, structured teams with well-defined processes over a fast-moving, evolving environment.
• Chase technical perfection without balancing it against customer impact and business needs.
• Struggle to make decisions when the way forward isn’t clear.
• Want to stay strictly in your lane and avoid infrastructure, frontend or unfamiliar parts of the stack.
• Want a strict 9–5: this is a hard role at a small, ambitious company. Some weeks are demanding, especially around launches and incidents. If protected fixed hours are a must for you, this isn’t the place.

What’s it like working at Yonder?

• We’re office-first, remote-friendly. We’re based in our Brick Lane office, complete with a terrace, breakfast, coffee (from a barista), dogs, beer taps and plenty of comfortable space to do your best work. We ask you to come into the office at least 3 days a week, with everyone coming in on Mondays.
• We take a values-led approach. Our principles are incredibly important to us, so we recommend you check them out here: Our DNA.
• We take development really seriously. We have a pretty structured process for progression, with fortnightly one-on-ones and quarterly peer perspectives. We also take some time at the end of each week to reflect and celebrate what we’ve learned and achieved.

What’s in it for me?

• Depending on your skill set and what you can bring from day one, you’ll be looking at: £53,578 - 73,163 depending on experience, £34,064 - 60,994 stock options.
• Plus 35 holidays (27 days annual leave + 8 days public leave).
• Team-building offsite.
• Private healthcare with Bupa.
• Up to 12 weeks enhanced parental leave after being with Yonder for 1 year.
• Learning & training allowance (£750/year) that you can use on books, courses, etc.
• Regular team breakfasts and lunch.
• Regular team events like Mini-golf, Escape Room, Cocktail making.
• Cycle-to-work scheme.
• Fresh pour-over coffee made by our very own CEO, Tim (London only).

What’s the interview process like?

• We take the candidate experience really seriously, so we’ve made the process as transparent as possible. We also promise to be super responsive, and will never leave you wondering where you stand for weeks on end.
• Stage 1: Intro call (45 mins): You will have an initial video call with Harry Jell, our CTO, to find out more about you and to tell you more about us.
• Stage 2: Case interview / Take home task (60 mins).
• Stage 3: Face-to-face interview (2 hours): Two 60-minute interviews to learn more about how you work. This will also be a great opportunity for you to meet the rest of the team so we would love it if you can come into the office for it!
• Interviews will be structured as follows: Experience interview: We’ll deep dive into your CV and talk about your past experiences. This stage will be with some a couple of backend engineers. Values interview: We want to learn more about how you work - we’ll ask you questions related to our principles (Our DNA). This stage will be with two people from our wider team. We’ll also include a 15-minute comfort break.
• Stage 4: Offer: If everyone’s happy, we’ll make you an offer to join us - YAY! We hope to always give you a decision between each stage within 24 hours (where possible).

Other things to know:

• We love closing the feedback loop at Yonder. You can expect specific feedback on our decision from Stage 2 onwards, and you can always ask for more.
• We must complete the right to work & criminal background checks for every new Yonder-er for compliance purposes because we handle sensitive customer data.
• We also do reference checks, ideally with your most recent manager on the phone.
• We like to move quickly at Yonder, so we will be ready to onboard you once the above checks are complete - the entire process can take between 2 - 6 weeks.

We know that diverse teams build better products. If you’re from an under-represented community, we’d especially love to hear from you. Even if you don’t feel 100% qualified, please do apply anyway. Your attitude and desire to grow are just as important as your experience.