Senior Software Engineer

About Valeria

Valeria is building the future of HR and payroll in Spain. We are rethinking how companies with high employee turnover (hospitality delivery events agriculture) manage their workforce. Our AI-powered platform automates contracts payroll and compliance with Spanish labor regulations making life easier for both companies and employees.

We are a fast-growing startup backed by top investors on a mission to disrupt a 5B industry that is still largely manual and outdated.

Your Role

Youll be a core member of our product engineering team designing and building the infrastructure that powers Valeria. From architecting scalable APIs to integrating with Spanish government systems and building AI-powered features your work will directly impact how thousands of employees get hired paid and managed.

What Youll Do

• Design and build scalable backend services using Python (Flask) with clean architecture patterns and modern Python practices
• Architect cloud-native solutions on Azure with focus on reliability performance and cost-efficiency
• Build and integrate AI capabilities into the product: document processing contract generation compliance automation and intelligent workflow optimization
• Develop complex integrations with external systems: Spanish Social Security (Seguridad Social) SEPE payroll providers e-signature APIshandling real-world edge cases and compliance requirements
• Implement event-driven architectures and async processing for high-volume operations (batch payroll for thousands of employees)
• Optimize database performance: design PostgreSQL schemas write efficient queries implement caching strategies with Redis
• Contribute to frontend when needed (React/TypeScript stack)we value full-stack mindset
• Establish engineering best practices: CI/CD pipelines comprehensive testing (pytest integration tests) code reviews monitoring and observability
• Own features end-to-end: from technical design and architecture discussions to deployment monitoring and iteration based on customer feedback
• Mentor engineers and shape technical decisions as we scale the team

What Were Looking For

Required:

• 5 years of professional software engineering experience building scalable production systems
• Strong backend engineering skills with modern languages and frameworksPython Go Java Rust or similar
• Deep understanding of API design (RESTful principles versioning authentication)
• Solid database experience: PostgreSQL or similar relational databases query optimization schema design
• Cloud infrastructure knowledge: Azure preferred (or AWS/GCP with willingness to learn Azure)experience with containerization (Docker) orchestration and IaC
• Experience with async/concurrent programming and distributed systems concepts
• Startup mindset: comfortable with ambiguity high autonomy and fast iteration cycles
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across product design and business teams

Highly Valued:

• Experience with Python in production (Flask or similar lightweight frameworks)if you havent used Python recently but have strong backend fundamentals well get you up to speed quickly
• Azure cloud experience: App Service Azure Functions Azure SQL Blob Storage Service Bus or other Azure services
• AI/ML integration experience: working with LLMs embeddings RAG systems or AI APIs in production environments
• Background in FinTech HR-tech or regulated industries (compliance-heavy products government integrations)
• Event-driven architectures: message queues (Azure Service Bus SQS RabbitMQ) streaming pub/sub patterns
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform Bicep Pulumi)
• Frontend skills (React TypeScript ) for full-stack contributions
• Open source contributions or side projects that demonstrate technical craftsmanship
• Experience scaling systems from early stage to high volume

What makes you a great fit: Youre the kind of engineer who cares deeply about code quality system design and user impact. Youve seen codebases scale (and sometimes struggle to scale). You understand the tradeoffs between speed and perfection in a startup context. Youre pragmatic but principled. Youre excited to work in a domain where correctness mattersgetting payroll wrong affects real peoples lives. Bonus points if youre curious about how AI can transform traditionally manual workflows.

Our Stack

Core Technologies:

• Backend: Python (Flask) clean architecture without heavy frameworks
• AI/ML: LLM integrations document processing
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Cloud & Infrastructure: Azure
• Frontend: React TypeScript
• DevOps & CI/CD: GitHub Actions Azure Monitor Application Insights
• Integration Layer: RESTful APIs async job processing webhooks

Our technical philosophy:
Weve built our infrastructure on Azure as our cloud platform leveraging its enterprise-grade services for reliability and scalability. Weve chosen Python with Flask as our backend foundation because it gives us flexibility and control without the overhead of monolithic frameworks. We prioritize clean testable code over framework magic. We use modern Python practicestype hints async patterns where needed comprehensive testing.

As an AI-native product were building intelligence into every layer: automating contract generation extracting data from documents predicting compliance issues and optimizing workflows. If youre excited about applying AI to solve real-world business problems (not just building AI for AIs sake) youll love working here.

Were looking for engineers who are fluent in modern backend development (regardless of your current primary language) and excited to work with Python in a cutting-edge production-grade environment. If youve built scalable systems in Java or other modern stacks youll find our architecture familiar and our codebase approachable.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation: 60000 - 70000 base salary equity package (0.25% - 1%)
• Early-stage impact: Join at a stage where your decisions shape the product and company culture
• Hybrid/Remote flexibility: Our HQ is in Barcelona hybrid setup with flexible remote options
• Free lunch when you come to the office (by Nora)
• Modern engineering culture: We care about clean code good architecture and avoiding tech debt
• Ownership and autonomy: Small team where your voice matters direct collaboration with founders
• Mission-driven work: Transform how HR and payroll are done in Spainsolve real problems for real businesses
• AI at the core: Work on cutting-edge AI applications in a production environment with real users

Why Join Valeria Now

• Timing: Were past the idea stage with real customers and revenue but early enough that youll have massive impact on product and architecture
• Problem space: Payroll and compliance are unsexy but criticalevery company needs this and current solutions are terrible
• Technical challenges: Complex domain logic high-stakes correctness requirements integrations with legacy government systems AI applications in document processing and workflow automation
• AI opportunity: Build an AI-native product from the ground up not retrofitting AI into legacy systems
• Growth potential: 5B market in Spain alone with expansion opportunities across Europe