Backend Engineer

NextGenEnergyJobs; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 75,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

Octopus Energy is seeking a backend engineer to own medium-sized Django features and deliver production-ready code with minimal supervision. You will ship continuously to trunk, working in a codebase with frequent merges from many contributors.

You will build and extend a Django backend serving multiple countries from a single codebase, integrating with Kraken platform services for billing, CRM, auth, and device control.

Qualifications

• Proven Python backend development experience with Django and unit/integration/functional testing.
• Experience with relational databases and background task processing.
• Comfort with large multi-tenant codebases and CI-driven development.

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of medium-sized technical features and deliver production-ready code with minimal supervision.
• Ship continuously to trunk with small PRs and fast feedback.
• Build and extend a Django backend serving multiple countries from a single codebase; balance generic vs territory-specific logic.
• Integrate with upstream platform services (billing, CRM, auth, device control) across service boundaries.
• Identify and address monitoring, observability gaps to keep live systems predictable.
• Participate in feature design reviews, code reviews, and documentation for PRs.
• Address bugs and incidents with systematic problem-solving in the core domain.

Skills

Python

Django

Testing

CI/CD

Relational databases

Background tasks

REST APIs

Job description

Octopus Energy started with a bold idea: to build Britain’s first truly digital energy supplier.

Key Responsibilities

• Take independent ownership of medium-sized technical features and components, delivering stable and production-ready code with minimal supervision.
• Ship continuously to trunk - small PRs, fast feedback, no release trains. You'll be working in a codebase with ~100 merges per week from dozens of contributors.
• Build and extend a Django backend serving multiple countries from a single codebase, making deliberate decisions about what should be generic vs. territory-specific.
• Integrate with upstream platform services (Kraken Customer, Kraken Field, Kraken Flex) that provide billing, CRM, auth, and device control - orchestrating across service boundaries daily.
• Proactively identify and address monitoring, alerting, and observability gaps within your applications to ensure live systems run predictably.
• Engage confidently in feature technical designs, participate actively in code reviews, and provide clear documentation for your pull requests.
• Use systematic, structured approaches to resolve bugs or service blockers, and confidently step in to address incident management within your core domain.

Requirements

• Solid backend foundations with a 3-4 year track record building web applications in Python, ideally with Django. Experience writing highly testable code (unit, integration, and functional tests run in parallel in CI) and working with relational databases and background task processing.
• Comfortable working in a large, multi-tenant codebase - navigating and extending shared abstractions, territory-specific behaviour, and integrations with upstream services. The habit of asking "would this work for another territory?" before building something bespoke.
• Comfortable with pace over process - we ship continuously, not in sprints, and trust automated guardrails (type checking, linting, CI) over manual gates.
• Openness and excitement around integrating modern AI tools into daily development, testing, and debugging to maintain pace and spark innovation.
• High initiative - able to break down engineering problems into shippable slices and make steady progress when requirements are evolving or domain context is still being built.
• A genuine curiosity about smart energy devices and the technology that connects them to people's homes. You won't need hardware expertise, but you'll be building the software that makes these devices useful to customers.
• Coachable - genuinely interested in feedback and willing to adapt your approach.