Application Platform Engineer

Payne Talent; København; On-site; DKK 900,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Skatteguiden in Copenhagen is seeking a Platform Application Engineer to own the shared application-layer services that power payments, identity, and integrations across product teams in a microservices setup. You will design and maintain backend services, ensure reliability, observability, and secure data handling, with end-to-end ownership and a product mindset for developer experience.

Join a small autonomous team at a profitable company serving over a million Danes, with AI-driven financial

Qualifications

• Senior backend or platform engineer with ownership of shared services at scale.
• Hands-on deployment and debugging of services on Kubernetes in production.
• Experience designing MySQL schemas for production and migrations.
• Knowledge of message brokers (RabbitMQ) and event-driven patterns.

Responsibilities

• Own the shared application platform and its core backend services.
• Design reliable, observable payment flows and provider integrations.
• Own identity, authorisation, and token management with secure, scalable patterns.
• Integrate security, privacy controls, GDPR, and ISO 27001 in the app layer.
• Improve developer experience with libraries and internal tooling.

Skills

Kubernetes

MySQL

RabbitMQ

OAuth 2.0

OpenID Connect

JWT

RBAC

GDPR

Platform as a product

Developer experience

Tools

React

TypeScript

Azure

Prometheus

Grafana

Sentry

ArgoCD

GitHub Actions

Job description

Over one million Danes use Skatteguiden to understand and optimise their taxes. We automate tax tracking, surface deductions people didn't know they had, and give users the insight they need to make better financial decisions. All connected directly to the Danish tax authority. We're an independent company of around 50 people based in Copenhagen, with a 4.7-star rating and a simple mission: make financial insight accessible to everyone, not just those who can afford an accountant.
Our platform has grown with us. The infrastructure that keeps Skatteguiden running has reached a scale and complexity that deserves full-time, specialist ownership, and the work ahead makes this an unusually good time to join.

About the role

You'll be joining the Platform team as a Platform Application Engineer, the counterpart to our Operational Platform team, which owns the infrastructure. Where they own the systems that keep Skatteguiden running, you'll own the shared application-layer services that the rest of engineering depends on.
The team treats these services as a product, with engineers distributed across several product teams as their users. Every product team touches payments, identity, and integrations. Your job is to make those services reliable, well-designed, and genuinely easy to build on, across a microservices architecture that favours low coupling and event-driven communication over direct dependencies.
We operate on a simple principle: you build it, you own it. That means end-to-end accountability, from design and implementation through to what happens when something goes wrong. Incidents aren't escalated to someone else's queue; they're yours to understand, resolve, and learn from.

What you'll do

Own the shared application platform. Design and build the core backend services underpinning payments, identity, authorisation, and third-party integrations — the shared foundation that product teams rely on every day.
Build and maintain payment services. Design payment flows that are reliable, observable, and compliant. Work with product teams to support new features and providers without coupling concerns or creating fragility in the critical path.
Own identity and authorisation. Design the systems that manage who our users are and what they can do — from OAuth flows and token management to fine-grained permission models and audit trails.
Integrate security and privacy into the application layer. Work with our Head of Security & Privacy to translate requirements into technical controls — particularly in identity, authorisation, and data handling — with GDPR and ISO 27001 in mind.
Integrate third-party systems. Own the integration layer connecting messaging, payment providers, and others. Ensure resilience, observability, and clear contracts.
Improve the developer experience. Build shared libraries, abstractions, and internal tooling that make it easier for product engineers to build on top of platform services correctly and confidently. Reduce the cognitive load on teams that shouldn't need to think about auth or payment internals.

Who we're looking for

You're likely a senior backend or platform engineer who's built and operated shared application services at scale, and who sees that role not just as backend development but as a product discipline — with the engineers who depend on your services as your primary users.
You take end-to-end ownership seriously. You don't consider something done when the code is merged, you care about how it behaves in production, you're on the hook when it doesn't, and you treat incidents as feedback worth acting on.
You're genuinely collaborative, someone who makes the people around them better, shares context freely, and doesn't work in isolation. And you're curious: you like trying new things, you're not attached to the way things have always been done, and you get energy from learning.

Must-have

A senior backend or platform engineer who's built and operated shared application services at scale, writes clean, maintainable services, takes API design seriously, and cares about the boundaries between components.
Hands-on experience deploying and debugging services on Kubernetes in production; you know how to get code running reliably in a Kubernetes environment without needing to own the cluster.
Experience designing MySQL schemas for production, migrations, indexing, query performance, and keeping data models clean as requirements evolve.
Working knowledge of message brokers such as RabbitMQ, event-driven patterns, consumer reliability, and how to design async communication that is easy to reason about across a distributed codebase.
Understanding of identity and authorisation (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT, RBAC), and how to implement them securely and maintainably at scale.
Security, privacy, and compliance awareness. You design with GDPR, auditability, and least-privilege access in mind from the start, not as an afterthought.
A platform as a product mindset. Experience thinking about developer experience as a product discipline, not just an engineering concern.
Genuine enthusiasm for AI. You use it daily, and you're always looking for new ways to apply it.

Nice-to-have

Experience building or operating payment integrations — familiarity with PSPs, webhook reliability, idempotency, and reconciliation.
Familiarity with React and TypeScript — enough to read, understand, and occasionally contribute to frontend code when the work calls for it.
Familiarity with Azure. You know your way around the platform — how services connect, how access and permissions work, and how to build in a cloud-native context.
Familiarity with our observability stack: Prometheus, Grafana, Sentry.
Familiarity with our GitOps tooling: ArgoCD and GitHub Actions.
Why join us

A substantial project from day one. The hosting migration means designing a production system from scratch, rare at any company.
Real influence. The architectural decisions made in this team will shape how Skatteguiden is built and operated for years. It's a small team with a high degree of autonomy, and the work is genuinely consequential.
Strong engineering culture. We take the technical foundations seriously. Security, architecture, and technical debt get real attention, not just lip service.
The product matters. Over one million Danes use Skatteguiden. Your work keeps it running and makes it possible to grow.
Solid company. We're independent, profitable, and growing. No VC pressure, no bloated roadmap. Just a clear mission and a team that cares.
A company that's serious about AI. We use AI across the business and we're only going deeper. Being a small, focused team means we can move fast on this, no lengthy approval chains, no slow rollouts. If you're always looking for ways to work smarter with AI, you'll fit right in.
Good people. We take the work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously. The culture is professional, informal, and genuinely collaborative.

Practical details

Location

Copenhagen. We're an office-first company, and it's a deliberate choice. We're moving fast, we have big ambitions, and we genuinely believe that being physically together is one of the things that makes that possible. Things move quicker when you can turn your chair and talk to someone. We want to be upfront about this so you know what to expect.
And if we're asking people to be in the office, we want it to be worth their while. We're a five-minute walk from Rådhuspladsen, stocked with everything from fruit to fizzy drinks to afternoon snacks, and lunch is at Claus Meyer's canteen just across the street, proper food, not an afterthought. If you're putting in a long day, dinner is covered too.
Start: As soon as possible
Salary: Competitive and based on your experience.
Reporting to: CTO

Our lean hiring process

Screening call with our recruiter (30 min) ONLINE
Technical interview with the manager and an engineer (120 min) ONSITE
Meeting with our CEO (45 min) ONSITE