Lead Backend Engineer, Service Standards

Vinteden; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 94,000 - 127,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Share options

25 days leave

MacBook

EAP

Team events

Home office budget €540

Lunch benefit

Benefits budget monthly

Pension plan

Transport card

Company bike

Hybrid work

Work from home allowance

Dog-friendly office

Job summary

Vinted is seeking a Lead Backend Engineer in the Service Standards team to shape how services are built, deployed, and operated at scale. You will define architectural directions and best practices, guiding engineers across domains with high autonomy.

You’ll collaborate with platform, observability, and product engineering to ensure the service framework integrates into daily workflows, improving developer experience and platform reliability as Vinted scales.

Qualifications

• Deep backend engineering experience with scalable services and frameworks.
• Track record of cross-team technical alignment and complex initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical direction and design around service standards and golden paths.
• Define and evolve company-wide service standards, including APIs, contracts, startup routines, and performance guidelines.
• Build reusable backend libraries, tools, and scaffolding for new service creation.
• Partner with backend engineers across domains to drive adoption of framework updates.
• Evaluate trade-offs between architectural consistency, delivery speed, and technical debt.
• Collaborate with Observability and Infrastructure teams to integrate telemetry, SLOs, and resilience into templates.
• Ensure security, privacy, and compliance are embedded in contracts and templates.
• Mentor senior backend engineers and participate in architectural reviews.
• Drive RFCs/ADRs for platform-wide standardization.

Skills

Backend engineering

Architectural design

Cross-team leadership

API design

Performance optimization

Job description

Brief info about Vinted

Our mission is to make second-hand the first choice, and we're looking for people who want to help us get there. Every day, we work together to help our members buy and sell pre-loved clothing and lifestyle items, giving each piece a second life – or even a third.
The Vinted Group is made up of three business units that support this mission:
Vinted Marketplace is Europe’s leading platform for second-hand fashion and a go-to destination for all kinds of pre-loved items, with a growing range of categories. Our platform connects millions of members across 20+ markets, helping great items find a new life.
Vinted Go enhances the shipping experience with a vast network of over 500,000 pick-up and drop-off points, partnering with more than 60 carriers across Europe, with added services like item verification for peace of mind on high-value pieces.
Vinted Pay is the newest part of the Vinted Group, dedicated to bringing secure, reliable payments to buyers and sellers across Europe. Seamlessly integrated into the Vinted app, it helps keep every transaction safe, efficient, and easy for our members.
Founded in 2008 in Lithuania, Vinted began as a way for friends to find new homes for clothes they no longer needed. In 2019, we became Lithuania's first unicorn! Today, our headquarters remain in Vilnius, and we've grown with offices across Europe, supported by a team of over 2,000 people.

Information about the position

As a Lead Backend Engineer in the Service Standards team, you will shape how services are built, deployed, and operated across all of Vinted. You will work closely with a team on the development of our core service framework—providing engineering teams with golden paths, robust service contracts, standardized tooling, and performance benchmarks to ensure high reliability and developer velocity at scale.

You will sit in the Service Standards team, part of the Service Ecosystem domain, reporting to the Engineering Manager of that team.

The Service Standards team is responsible for standardizing service startup, consumer APIs, and foundational backend frameworks across Vinted's engineering landscape. Within it, this is a senior individual-contributor role combining technical leadership with high autonomy—you will define architectural directions, establish best practices, and guide engineers across domains without requiring full management overhead.

You will collaborate closely with platform, observability, and product engineering teams to ensure our service framework and standards seamlessly integrate into daily workflows. Your work will directly impact developer experience, platform reliability, and system performance as Vinted continues to scale.

In this position, you’ll

• Lead the technical direction and design around service standards and golden paths.
• Define and evolve company-wide service standards, including consumer APIs, service contracts, startup routines, and performance guidelines.
• Build reusable backend libraries, tools, and scaffolding to streamline new service creation and maintenance.
• Partner with backend engineers across domains to drive adoption of framework updates and gather continuous feedback.
• Evaluate pragmatic trade-offs between architectural consistency, delivery speed, and technical debt across the platform.
• Collaborate with Observability and Infrastructure teams to integrate telemetry, SLOs, and resilience practices into standard service templates.
• Ensure security, privacy, and compliance guidelines are embedded directly into service contracts and framework templates.
• Mentor senior backend engineers, participate in architectural design reviews, and foster high engineering standards across teams.
• Drive architectural proposals (RFCs/ADRs) for platform-wide backend standardization.

About you

• Have deep backend engineering experience and strong architectural intuition, with proven success building scalable services and frameworks.
• Demonstrate a track record of driving cross-team technical alignment and leading complex initiatives across multiple engineering groups.
• Possess expert knowledge in designing API contracts, service startup patterns, and performance optimization.
• Understand trade-offs in platform design and know how to build golden paths that engineers love to use.
• Communicate technical vision and architectural choices clearly to both technical leads and engineering leadership.
• Enjoy mentoring engineers, conducting design reviews, and sharing best practices to level up the backend engineering community.

Work perks

• The opportunity to benefit from our share options programme
• 25 days of paid annual leave
• Newest MacBook models
• Confidential Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for you and your family
• Frequent team-building events
• Home office support: we provide IT workstation equipment and a personal budget of up to €540 for home workplace furniture
• Lunch benefit per working day
• A personal monthly budget for shopping on Vinted
• Collective Defined Contribution Pension plan
• NS Business Card for your commute to the office by public transport
• Company bike leasing scheme
• Monthly budget for a flexible benefits platform
• Work from Home allowance
• A dog-friendly office

Working at Vinted

Workation policy

Better balance holidays with workdays by working remotely! Up to 90 days per year in the EU, of these, 21 days can be spent globally. For non-EU citizens, it's 21 days worldwide. This can be combined with time off for vacation or personal time.

Individual learning budget

Each year, you’ll be given a learning budget (starting at €3,000), and a total of up to 10 working days over a 2-year period to support your personal and professional development.

Hybrid work

Our hybrid model, with 2 recommended office days a week, gives you and your team the flexibility to decide if and when you want to work from home, and when to catch up in person.

Equal opportunity

We welcome applications from everybody, regardless of your background, identity, or life experiences. Job openings come with guides, not checklists. If you’re excited about a role, but don’t identify with every point in the ‘About you’ section, apply anyway – you might still be the perfect match!

The annual gross salary range for this position excluding 8% holiday pay is:

€93.500—€126.500 EUR