Senior Backend Engineer

Wheely; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 144,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Private medical and dental

Life and critical illness cover

MacBook Pro + 4k display

Cycle to Work scheme

Relocation support with visa Spons

Professional development stipend

Job summary

Wheely, a premium transport company, seeks a Senior Backend Engineer to build high-performance Go services and migrate legacy Ruby monoliths. You will ship with TDD, DDD, and CI/CD, using PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ, gRPC, and Thrift on AWS/Kubernetes.

Office-based in West London, four days/week in the office with one remote day. Salary from £120,000, plus stock options, private health/dental, life cover, MacBook Pro, 4k display, cycle-to-work, relocation support, and a development

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience building and maintaining scalable backend services.
• Go is preferred; other strong languages accepted with solid fundamentals.
• Relational and NoSQL DBs and message brokers (RabbitMQ/Kafka) experience.
• English proficiency at least B2; comfortable technical debates.

Responsibilities

• Write high-quality, performant Go code for new microservices.
• Migrate away from legacy services while maintaining reliability.
• Collaborate with product, design, and data science to translate requirements into designs.
• Ensure system responsiveness under heavy load with low latency.

Skills

Go

Backend architecture

TDD

English proficiency

Tools

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Redis

RabbitMQ

Kafka

gRPC

Thrift

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

About Wheely

Wheely is redefining premium transportation across major cities in Europe, the US, and the Middle East. We blend cutting-edge technology with the craft of five-star chauffeuring to deliver an experience trusted by more than 100,000 active riders and 1,200 corporate accounts. We're a profitable, fast-growing scale-up with $43M raised and over $100M in annual revenue. Having recently launched in New York City, we're expanding rapidly across the US and EMEA. If you take pride in your craft and want to help shape the next chapter of our growth, we'd love to hear from you.

About The Role

We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join one of our teams that keeps frameworks lean and focuses on what matters: clean, maintainable code, shipped fast with TDD, DDD, and continuous integration and delivery. We are a Go shop, and while we're busy migrating away from our Ruby monolith, our stack includes PostgreSQL, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, Redis, gRPC, and Thrift. Everything runs on AWS and Kubernetes, managed via Terraform. Our interview process includes a recruiter screen, algorithms, live coding, a system design section, and a structured review of past experience and achievements.

Responsibilities

• Write high-quality, performant code primarily in Go.
• Implement new microservices while helping us responsibly manage and migrate away from legacy services.
• Work closely with product managers, designers, and data scientists to turn abstract requirements into concrete technical designs.
• Ensure our systems stay responsive under heavy load, optimising for both latency and reliability.

Requirements

• 6+ years of experience building and maintaining scalable backend services.
• We use Go. If you know it, great. If not, we'll interview you in your strongest language (Python, C++, Ruby, etc.). We hire for engineering fundamentals, not syntax.
• In-depth knowledge of relational and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis) and experience with message brokers like RabbitMQ or Kafka.
• Upper-Intermediate (B2) English proficiency or higher. You should be comfortable debating technical trade-offs with your peers.

What We Offer

• Office-based role in West London, four days a week with flexible start and finish times, plus one remote day of your choice
• Salary starting from £120,000
• Employee stock options plan
• Private medical and dental insurance
• Life and critical illness cover
• Latest-generation MacBook Pro and 4k display
• Monthly credit towards Wheely journeys
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Professional development stipend
• Relocation support, including visa sponsorship and allowance

All of your personal information will be collected stored and processed in accordance with Wheely's Candidate Privacy Notice