(Senior) Backend Engineer, Maps Engineering London

Wheely; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Private medical insurance

Dental insurance

Life and critical illness cover

MacBook Pro

4k display

Monthly ride credit

Cycle to work

Relocation support (visa sponsorship)

Job summary

Wheely, a premium transportation scale-up, is seeking a Mid/Senior Backend Engineer for its Mapping-focused backend team in West London. You will build high-quality Go services, develop new microservices, and partner with product, design and data teams to translate complex requirements into scalable systems.

The role emphasizes performance, maintainable code, TDD and CI/CD, with a stack including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ, gRPC, Thrift, AWS, Kubernetes and Terraform.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience building and maintaining backend services.
• Go is used; strongest language welcome if not familiar with Go.
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases and message brokers.

Responsibilities

• Write high-quality Go code for new microservices.
• Migrate away from legacy services while delivering new features.
• Collaborate with product, design and data science teams on technical designs.
• Ensure system responsiveness under heavy load with low latency.

Skills

Go

Distributed systems

SQL/NoSQL

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Redis

RabbitMQ

Kafka

Geospatial data

Map matching

Routing algorithms

DDD

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

Tools

gRPC

Thrift

OSRM

Terraform

Job description

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

Our Mapping team tackles the spatial intelligence of the platform: road matching, low‑latency ETA predictions, and processing thousands of coordinates every second to ensure every journey is accurately tracked.

We’re looking for a Mid/Senior Backend Engineer to join a team 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 and live coding. Senior+ candidates also complete 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

• 3+ years of experience (5+ years for seniors) 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++, Java, 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.
• At least 1 year of hands‑on experience with mapping‑related work such as processing noisy geospatial data, map‑matching techniques, or road network graphs and routing algorithms.

Nice To Have

• Driver‑side intuition for navigation systems (rerouting behavior, GPS drift, missed turns, real‑world edge cases).
• Experience with routing engines like OSRM.
• Proficiency in C++.
• Familiarity with open geospatial datasets such as OpenStreetMap.

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
• 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
• Relocation support, including visa sponsorship and allowance