Senior Backend Engineer (London)

Fresha; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Fresha is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join our London team, delivering AI-augmented workflows and scalable backend services. You will design and ship features across a polyglot stack, including Ruby, Elixir, GraphQL, TS, and gRPC, while operating in a Kubernetes-driven environment and driving a migration to microservices.

You’ll collaborate with Product, Design, Infra, and mobile teams to ensure robust, observable systems and high-quality user experiences in a fast-paced, autonomous

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in product engineering, developer tools, or infrastructure at scale.
• Experience building globally distributed systems.
• Knowledge of event-driven architectures (Kafka).
• Familiarity with languages such as Elixir, Ruby, or TypeScript is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, Frontend, Infrastructure, and Mobile engineers to take features from discovery to rollout and beyond.
• Be responsible for features from discovery to observability: technical design, implementation, testing, and rollout.
• Design, build, and maintain efficient, scalable, and reliable Ruby/Elixir code.
• Work with a polyglot stack (Ruby, Elixir, GraphQL, TypeScript, gRPC) and modern messaging systems (Kafka).
• Operate within a Kubernetes-driven environment as we continue moving to a microservice architecture.
• Embrace Domain-Driven Design to build high-quality, impactful products from inception to delivery.

Skills

AI-Augmented Workflow

Globally distributed systems

Kafka

Elixir/Ruby/TypeScript

Backend engineering

Tools

Kubernetes

GraphQL

gRPC

Job description

Location: Old Street, London — Onsite (4 days / week). Fresha: Shaping the Future of Beauty & Wellness

Join Fresha, the leading marketplace platform transforming the beauty and wellness industry globally. With over 120,000 businesses and 450,000 stylists trusting our platform, we've powered over 1 billion appointments worldwide. Fresha empowers businesses with an all-in-one platform for bookings, point-of-sale, marketing, and more, while connecting consumers to local services.

At Fresha, we believe AI is a force multiplier for feature delivery, not just a coding assistant. We provide every engineer with top-tier tooling (Claude, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) to strip away technical toil—so you can focus your energy on shipping high-impact product features. We value engineers who know how to leverage these tools to drive momentum within our 6-week cycles, accelerating the journey from concept to code while maintaining the deep technical judgment to verify, secure, and own the final user experience.

To foster a collaborative environment that thrives on face-to-face interactions and teamwork, all Fresha employees work in the office four days per week, with the flexibility to work remotely on Wednesdays.

London office: The Bower, 207-211, Old St, Tower, London EC1V 9NR

Role Overview

Given our exciting and progressive growth plans, we are looking for an exceptional Senior Backend Engineer to join our global business. Reporting directly to the Team Lead, and working collaboratively in across-functional product team within a tribe, you will be accountable for designing and developing applications and coordinating with the rest of the team working on different layers of the infrastructure Fresha. This is a great opportunity for someone looking to work in a fast-paced and changing environment, who likes to work autonomously, enjoys a challenge and wants to make an impact! To foster a collaborative environment that thrives on face-to-face interaction and teamwork, you will need to travel for one week each quarter to our team events (in London/Warsaw/Prishtina).

What you will be doing

• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, Frontend, Infrastructure, and Mobile engineers to take features from discovery to rollout and beyond.
• Be responsible for features from discovery to observability: technical design, implementation, testing, and rollout.
• Design, build, and maintain efficient, scalable, and reliable Ruby/Elixir code.
• Work with a polyglot stack (Ruby, Elixir, GraphQL, TypeScript, gRPC) and modern messaging systems (Kafka).
• Operate within a Kubernetes-driven environment as we continue moving to a microservice architecture.
• Embrace Domain-Driven Design to build high-quality, impactful products from inception to delivery.

What we are looking for

• AI-Augmented Workflow: You have deep experience building and interacting with AI agents, using them to amplify your output to 5x that of manual coding. You can integrate agents into our workflow while strictly adhering to our architecture and security standards, taking full accountability for ensuring all generated code meets the quality expectations of a Senior Engineer.
• Experience building and maintaining globally distributed systems.
• Knowledge of event-driven architectures (Kafka).
• 5+ years of experience in product engineering, developer tools, or infrastructure at scale.
• A pragmatic generalist who thrives on learning new frameworks and tackling complex challenges.
• Familiarity with languages such as Elixir, Ruby, or TypeScript is a plus.

Why Join Fresha?

• Real Impact: Directly influence our product and architecture in a rapidly growing global business.
• Cutting-Edge Tech: Work with modern technologies and contribute to a significant migration to microservices.
• Dynamic Culture: Be part of a team that encourages autonomy and innovation.

Interview Process

• Screen Stage - Video-call with a member from the Talent Team (45-60min)
• 1st Stage - Technical video/In-person interview with the team (90min)
• 2nd Stage - Technical Video/In-person interview with Team (up to 2 hours)
• Final Stage - Video interview with Head of Engineering / VP of Engineering (60min) We aim to finalise the entire interview process and deliver feedback within 4 weeks.

Inclusive workforce

At Fresha, we are creating a culture where individuals of all backgrounds feel comfortable. We want all Fresha people to feel included and truly empowered to contribute fully to our vision and goals. Everyone who applies will receive fair consideration for employment.

We do not discriminate based on race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, gender identity, national origin, disability, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics in the location in which the candidate is applying. If you have any accessibility requirements that would make you more comfortable during the interview process and/or once you join, please let us know so that we can support you.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us