Senior Data Platform Engineer

Depop Limited; United States; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 80,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health + Mental Wellbeing support

25 days annual leave

Life Insurance

Free Depop shipping within the UK

Job summary

Depop Limited is seeking an experienced software engineer to lead technological initiatives and champion data as a first-class citizen. You will be responsible for architecting platform services and developing scalable data systems while collaborating with diverse stakeholders.

The ideal candidate has advanced programming skills, experience in cloud environments, and a strong focus on operational excellence. Depop offers a flexible work model, extensive leave options, and a commitment to employee growth.

Qualifications

• Proven foundation in software engineering best practices — testing, clean coding standards.
• Ability to think strategically and pragmatically.
• Passion for learning new technologies.

Responsibilities

• Develop microservices, libraries, platforms and tools.
• Lead large, complex initiatives to enable data users.
• Champion scalable standard processes through automation.

Skills

Advanced knowledge in a high-level programming language (e.g. Python, Scala)

Experience designing, building, and scaling complex data systems

Excellent communication and collaboration skills

Expertise in data orchestration tools (e.g. Databricks, Airflow)

DevOps experience with CI/CD pipelines

Tools

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

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.

What You’ll Do

• Pave a path for data as a product: Champion data as a first‑class citizen by introducing robust data capabilities, observability, and governance into the platform to enable decision making and ultimately better experience for Depop’s end users.
• Software Engineering: Develop microservices, libraries, platforms and tools.
• Technical Design: Architect and evolve platform services that enable teams to work with data efficiently and securely at scale.
• Lead Technological Initiatives: Lead large, complex initiatives that will further enable our data users by setting the vision and roadmap, gathering requirements and defining the scope and success metrics for your initiative, all while embracing a platform‑as‑a‑product approach.
• Uphold Operational Excellence: Automating infrastructure and monitoring, leading incident response and root cause analysis, and continuously improving the health and performance of our data platform.
• Champion scalable standard processes through automation, clear documentation, and knowledge sharing via tutorials and training sessions.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Work closely to establish trusted relationships with both technical and non-technical stakeholders to define, design, and implement solutions within our data platform.
• Invest in others’ growth: Mentoring and sharing knowledge, helping elevate technical standards and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
• Build on our Engineering Culture: Take an active role in improving the engineering culture at Depop and encourage others around you to follow these values.

What You’ll Bring

• Advanced knowledge in a high-level programming language (e.g. Python, Scala) with a proven foundation in software engineering best practices — testing, clean coding standards, code reviews, pair programming, automation‑first mindset.
• Proven hands‑on experience designing, building, and scaling complex data systems and backend infrastructure in production environments within a modern cloud‑based environment (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Ability to think strategically and pragmatically: define long‑term technical strategies and execute rapidly.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills; comfortable influencing technical direction and aligning diverse stakeholders across the organisation.
• Expertise in managing and integrating data orchestration and processing tools & platforms such as Databricks, Airflow, dbt, Kafka or similar.
• Experience with agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.).
• A passion for learning new things and keeping on top of the latest developments and technologies in our field.

Nice To Have

• DevOps experience building CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions), IaC (Terraform).
• Experience working with containerisation technologies — Docker, Kubernetes.
• Previous hands‑on expertise with Spark.
• Advanced experience working and understanding the tradeoffs of at least one of the following Data Lake table/file formats: Delta Lake, Parquet, Iceberg, Hudi.
• Experience working with lakehouse / medallion architectures in Databricks Streaming.
• Knowledge: Experience with Kafka/Flink/Confluent or other streaming ecosystems, with a solid understanding of their components.
• Experience working with data governance, observability and catalogue solutions (e.g. Monte Carlo, Atlan, Datahub) enabling rich data lineage, data contracts, SLA/SLO, tagging and data quality monitoring capabilities.

Additional Information

• Health + Mental Wellbeing: PMI and cash plan healthcare access with Bupa; subsidised counselling and coaching with Self Space; Cycle to Work scheme; Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) 24/7 confidential support; Mental Health First Aiders.
• Work/Life Balance: 25 days annual leave with option to carry over up to 5 days; 1 company‑wide day off per quarter; up to 2 days additional paid leave per year for volunteering; fully paid 4‑week sabbatical after 5 years of consecutive service; flexible working model with hybrid, office‑based and remote options.
• Family Life: 18 weeks paid parental leave for full‑time regular employees; IVF leave, shared parental leave, and paid emergency parent/carer leave.
• Learn + Grow: Budgets for conferences, learning subscriptions, and more; mentorship and programmes to upskill employees.
• Your Future: Life Insurance (financial compensation of 3× your salary); pension matching up to 6% of qualifying earnings.
• Depop Extras: Employees enjoy free shipping on their Depop sales within the UK; special milestones are celebrated with gifts and rewards.