Senior Backend Engineer (Java) – Identity

Zepz; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited annual leave

Healthcare benefits

Employee discounts

Job summary

Senior Backend Engineer (Java) at Zepz in London, Identity domain. You will design and deliver scalable backend services powering sign-up, verification, and account management across WorldRemit and Sendwave.

You’ll write robust Java code, engage in architecture reviews, and help shape the platform with a strong emphasis on reliability and security. You’ll work in a cross-functional team with autonomy, tackle on-call responsibilities, and contribute to JVM-based services while collaborating with

Qualifications

• Several years of backend experience at scale.
• Strong knowledge of JVM, Java, and Spring Boot.
• Experience with identity, KYC, or fintech systems is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Write readable, well-designed, and well-tested code.
• Actively review designs and code from others.
• Improve monitoring and health of systems.
• Participate in on-call and production support.
• Collaborate with other teams to drive improvements.
• Own larger pieces of work and influence the roadmap.

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

REST APIs

gRPC

PostgreSQL

Kubernetes

Distributed systems

Tools

Kubernetes

ArgoCD

AWS

Terraform

Grafana

Loki

Job description

Senior Backend Engineer (Java) – Identity Zepz London

Senior Backend Engineer (Java) – Identity

Join Zepz: Breaking Down Borders, Together
Our Meaningful Mission

At Zepz, we're all about breaking down barriers for our customers and our teammates. Our purpose is deeply personal, we provide a lifeline and deliver opportunities to cross-border communities that need it most through cutting edge finance and tech. Zepz is the power behind WorldRemit and Sendwave, driven by the mission to celebrate the incredible impact migrants have, both at home and abroad. We're not just moving money; we're building a world that truly recognizes and supports global connections.

Who You'll Be Joining

We look for mission-driven builders who thrive in a fast-paced environment connected to a true purpose. We’re an always developing team of experts that enjoy problem solving and bring clarity to tough challenges. At Zepz, we are Relentless Learners, always seeking feedback, and Responsible Owners, treating company resources like your own. We depend on Transparent Communicators who keep the team aligned through open, honest talk.

Our Core Commitments — What We Live By

Our vibrant and truly diverse culture is built on three core commitments, that guide how we work and interact:

• Integrity: We always do the right thing. It’s simple, but it’s the foundation of everything we build for our customers and each other.
• Outcomes: We work for our customers. Their success and prosperity are the results we focus on delivering.
• Velocity: We are fast! We maintain high energy levels and make smart decisions quickly, keeping us nimble and ahead of the curve.

Perks of Joining Our Team

We believe in empowering colleagues because we genuinely trust our team. Our culture is founded on this high trust, which naturally encourages the high ownership that drives us to meet our shared high expectations and deliver high performance. While we have all the tools to work remotely, we value the purpose and benefits of in-person connections so we expect our teams to come to the office on a regular basis, and therefore be within a comfortable commutable distance from our London office. Alongside a great office environment, think unlimited annual leave , great healthcare benefits, and employee discounts. We want you to thrive and focus entirely on making your biggest impact! In turn, we expect you to bring high ownership and commitment to your work. This is a place where we value trust and high performance, and we'll provide the environment and support needed for you to excel.

About the role

At Zepz, our engineers are passionate about delivering a solid customer experience and are eager to contribute to the product, regardless of their tech stack. We are seeking engaged and customer-focused engineers who are committed to writing quality code and dedicated to their contributions at Zepz. We value individuals who are adaptable to a wide range of problems and challenges and can collaborate across teams to drive improvements.

As a Senior Backend Engineer in the Identity domain, you will work within a cross-functional feature team building the services that power how millions of customers sign up, verify their identity, log in, and manage their accounts across WorldRemit and Sendwave — spanning authentication, onboarding, KYC, and account recovery. These are high-traffic, security-sensitive systems where reliability and low friction directly shape whether a customer transacts or churns.

You will have the autonomy to make platform decisions and provide insights to the rest of the team. You'll collaborate closely with engineers of varying experience levels and interests, helping to improve and develop our Java services, build pipeline, and tooling. In Identity, backend engineers have a significant impact on the frontend too — you'll often need to consider the full user-facing experience, not just the API behind it. You'll be committing, reviewing, and shipping code early on, with the support and time to ramp up properly — there's a lot to learn across our diverse systems.

Reliability is core to the role: the team owns its services in production, and you'll take part in the on-call rotation — responding to incidents, supporting production, and driving remediation and long-term fixes.

What you bring to the table
Technical skills

• Several years of experience building backend services at scale.
• Strong understanding of modern JVM development centered around Java and the Spring ecosystem (Spring Boot).
• Proficiency in Java; interest in or experience with Kotlin or Python is a plus.
• Experience designing and operating REST/gRPC APIs, event-driven systems, and relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL).
• Ability to work with AI in a safe, structured environment.
• Ability to work with tools like Grafana and Loki for debugging and fault finding.
• Some understanding of Kubernetes, ArgoCD, and AWS cloud is advantageous, as well as technologies like Terraform.

Technical Execution

• You take pride in writing readable, well-designed, and well-tested software.
• You will improve code structure and have an impact on architecture.
• You will actively review tech designs and code from others.
• You'll improve monitoring and the health of your team's systems.
• You'll participate in on-call and production support — triaging incidents, restoring service, and following through on remediation so issues don't recur.
• You'll build relationships with other engineering teams and identify collaboration opportunities.

• You'll own larger pieces of work, assist with design and technical/implementation choices, and influence the roadmap within your team.
• You easily communicate with non-technical team members and can translate their feedback into code.
• You have experience working in a cross-functional team.
• You adjust quickly and effectively to shifting priorities and complexity.

Customer Obsession

• Care about users, and want to give them an improved, simpler experience.
• Are more of a "get it done" than a "perfectionist" type person — you value getting features into the hands of our users.
• Aren't afraid to throw away code you wrote — because after testing, a flow you built doesn't work as well as a different one.

Bonus points if you have

• Experience with identity/authentication systems (Auth0 or comparable), MFA/OTP flows, or account-takeover prevention.
• Familiarity with KYC/AML regulatory requirements in international payments.
• Experience in fintech or other regulated, high-availability environments.
• Familiarity with any of the communities we serve.

AI Literacy & Tools

As Zepz continues to build AI into how we work, we expect everyone to engage with it as a core part of their role. For this position we are looking for:

• A genuine curiosity about AI and how it can be applied in your area of work, from accelerating analysis and insight generation, to improving how we design and deliver processes and communications.
• Practical experience using AI tools in a professional context, whether to connect information, draft content, build frameworks, or create insights from data. We want people who actively use AI to increase productivity, not those who are waiting to be told to.
• Strong AI literacy. An understanding of what AI assistants can and cannot do, how to prompt effectively, and how to critically evaluate AI-generated output before using it.
• Awareness of the ethical considerations and responsible use of AI in the workplace, particularly in the context of sensitive data, customer experience, and compliance.
• Prior experience using Claude (Anthropic) is a nice-to-have but not essential — what matters most is that you are genuinely engaged with AI as a tool, comfortable experimenting, and eager to share what works with your wider team

If you want to join us in our journey to help break barriers in financial access and improve lives globally, there's no better place or time to join.

Our global team of 800+ people is spread across six continents. We aspire to hire the best mix of people from former Olympians to YouTube influencers and we speak over twenty languages. This incredible diversity isn't a bonus; it's the engine that lets us serve the world.

Full-time