Backend Engineer, Platform

United States Digital Space LLC

United States

Hybrid

USD 120,000 - 190,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Dog-friendly offices

Flexible Working: MyMode hybrid

Sabbatical after 5 years

Life Insurance 3x salary

Pension matching

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC is seeking a skilled Software Engineer to join our Platform Pillar, focusing on core APIs and services that power the company’s backend systems.

You’ll help shape technical direction, improve scalability and reliability, and collaborate with a cross-functional team that values strong engineering and people skills. This role offers a hybrid work model and growth opportunities.

Qualifications

Solid software engineering experience with Scala and Python stack
Backend engineering background: design, build, test, operate production services
Willingness to work across paradigms and languages including backend, platform, data-oriented work
Strong technical and non-technical communication skills
Proficiency in unit and integration testing
Experience with relational or non-relational databases
Experience with Kubernetes or similar container orchestration
Experience working on production systems with reliability, scalability, and maintainability
Ability to proactively identify and solve complex technical problems and know when to seek guidance

Responsibilities

Work with engineering, product, platform, and security teams to understand problems and design solutions
Produce high-quality, reliable, maintainable backend code serving millions of users
Own platform and product development from discovery to implementation
Contribute to high-level architectural thinking and long-term technical direction
Improve scalability, reliability, observability, and operational safety of core systems
Develop foundational platform capabilities including backend systems, service communication, and deployment tooling
Evolve the core application to stay safe, performant, and future-proof
Translate technical complexity into actionable plans for stakeholders
Support applications end to end including incident management, debugging, and monitoring
Adopt agile practices and user-centered thinking
Participate in post-mortems, architecture reviews, and technical strategy discussions
Collaborate daily with cross-functional teams to solve problems and write high-quality code
Mentor colleagues to share knowledge and strengthen team skills
Own code, workflows, services, and data through their lifecycle

Skills

Scala

Python

Backend engineering

Communication

Unit testing

Databases

Kubernetes

Production systems

Problem solving

Tools

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Terraform

Job description

the company is looking for a skilled Software Engineer to join us within our Platform Pillar, working on the team that owns and evolves the company’s core APIs and services.

The Platform Pillar is part of the company’s enablement function, responsible for building and running the internal foundations that help the company engineers ship software safely, confidently, and efficiently. Rather than focusing primarily on user‑facing features, Platform teams create and maintain the systems, tools, infrastructure, and engineering capabilities that other teams rely on every day.

This team owns and manages the company’s core application, which sits at the heart of the platform and is responsible for managing critical user and product data. It is a foundational part of the company’s technology estate, supporting many of the experiences used by buyers, sellers, and internal teams across the business.

This is a unique opportunity to help shape the technical direction of one of the company’s most important backend systems. You’ll be working on highly impactful platform problems, improving scalability and reliability, reducing technical risk, and helping define how the company’s core systems evolve for years to come.

You’ll be building and improving backend services, influencing architectural direction, and working with a collaborative, supportive team that values good engineering and good people in equal measure.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer, providing employment opportunities without regard to age, ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy or maternity, marriage and civil partnership, or any other protected status. We’re continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have.

If, due to a disability, you need adjustments to complete the application, please let us know by sending an email with your name, the role to which you would like to apply, and the type of support you need to complete the application to hr@unitedstatesdigital.space.

Responsibilities

Work closely with Engineering Managers, Product Managers, Platform Engineers, Security Engineers, Data Engineers, and other backend teams to understand problems and design effective solutions.
Produce high‑quality code that is well‑structured, reliable, maintainable, and simple to understand, supporting systems used by millions of the company users.
Take ownership of platform and product development, from technical discovery and problem definition through to the breakdown of work and implementation.
Contribute to high‑level architectural thinking, helping to set the long‑term technical direction for the company’s core application and associated platform services.
Improve the scalability, reliability, observability, and operational safety of critical backend systems.
Work on foundational platform capabilities, including core backend systems, service‑to‑service communication, authentication, infrastructure architecture, messaging, database scalability, deployment tooling, and internal engineering enablement.
Help evolve the company’s core application so it remains safe, performant, and fit for future product and engineering needs.
Communicate clearly with stakeholders across engineering, product, security, data, and infrastructure, translating technical complexity into shared understanding and actionable plans.
Support applications end to end, including production incident management, debugging, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
Embrace agile methodologies, user‑centred thinking, and a pragmatic approach to solving real business and engineering problems.
Engage in a culture of continuous improvement by participating in blameless post‑mortems, architecture reviews, engineering guild sessions, and technical strategy discussions.
Collaborate daily with fellow engineers in a cross‑functional environment to solve complex problems and write high‑quality code.
Mentor and support the growth of colleagues, identifying opportunities to share knowledge and strengthen team skill sets.
Own your code, workflows, services, and data through their entire lifecycle.

Must Haves

Solid software engineering experience, with strong evidence of the ability to learn and work effectively in the team’s Scala and Python stack.
A strong backend engineering background, including experience designing, building, testing, and operating production services.
Willingness to work across multiple paradigms and languages, including backend, platform, and data‑oriented work.
Strong technical and non‑technical communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical topics clearly to different audiences.
Proficiency in testing solutions at different levels, including unit and integration testing.
Experience with relational or non‑relational databases.
Experience with Kubernetes or similar container orchestration technologies.
Experience working on production systems where reliability, scalability, and maintainability are critical.
Ability to proactively identify and solve complex technical problems while knowing when to seek guidance or collaborate with peers.

Desired Experience

Experience writing high‑quality backend code in Scala, TypeScript, Python, or another JVM language. We are looking for a polyglot engineer who is motivated by the problem being solved, not just the language being used.
Experience working with large, business‑critical backend applications or platform systems.
Experience with databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, or DynamoDB.
Experience building scalable web applications or backend systems handling significant traffic and data volume.
Experience improving reliability, scalability, observability, and operational maturity in production systems.
Experience working in a DevOps culture, including CI/CD pipelines, observability, incident response, and production ownership.
Experience working on platform capabilities that support other engineering teams, such as shared services, deployment tooling, infrastructure abstractions, or internal developer workflows.
A product‑oriented and platform‑minded approach, with a focus on solving real engineering and business problems rather than over‑engineering solutions.

Bonus Points

Experience with the Typelevel stack.
Experience with the Play Framework.
Experience working on platform engineering, internal developer platforms, or core infrastructure systems.
Experience with large monoliths, service extraction, or modernisation of legacy backend systems.
Experience with eCommerce or marketplace platforms.
Experience with event‑driven architectures, preferably using Kafka.
Experience using production AWS infrastructure, ideally with Terraform.
Experience with data engineering.
Experience with service‑to‑service authentication, internal platform security, or cloud cost management.
Experience enabling AI platform capabilities or building guardrails for safe AI adoption.

Additional Information

Health + Mental Wellbeing

PMI and cash plan healthcare access with Bupa
Subsidised counselling and coaching with Self Space
Cycle to Work scheme with options from Evans or the Green Commute Initiative
Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for 24/7 confidential support
Mental Health First Aiders across the business for support and signposting

Work/Life Balance

25 days of annual leave with the option to carry over up to 5 days
Impact hours: Up to 2 days of additional paid leave per year for volunteering
Fully paid 4‑week sabbatical after completion of 5 years of consecutive service with the company, to give you a chance to recharge or do something you love.
Flexible Working: MyMode hybrid‑working model with Flex, Office‑Based, and Remote options role‑dependent
All offices are dog‑friendly

Family Life

For birth parent: 20 weeks of paid parental leave for full‑time regular employees
For non‑birth parents: 12 weeks of paid parental leave for full‑time regular employees
IVF leave, shared parental leave, and paid emergency parent/carer leave

Learn + Grow

Twice‑yearly development chats and yearly performance reviews
Learning budget
Upskilling our employees with company‑wide training workshops, materials and resources

Your Future