Senior Backend Engineer AdTech

Company Description

Depop is a peer-to-peer circular fashion marketplace where anyone can buy sell and discover secondhand fashion. Our mission is simple: to make fashion circular by making secondhand as exciting and rewarding as buying new.

Founded in 2011 Depops diverse community has helped move resale into the mainstream where buying secondhand is no longer an alternative but how people of different ages now engage with fashion. Today more than 56 million registered users come to Depop to find great value express their own personal style and give clothes a longer life. We believe that everything you want already exists and our role is to help people discover it.

Powered by a team of over 500 people our company is headquartered in London with offices in New 2021 Depop became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Etsy - the global marketplace for unique and creative goods - and continues to operate as a standalone company. For more information visit

We aim to create an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome no matter who they are or where theyre from. Just as our platform connects people globally we believe our workplace should reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. We thrive on the power of different perspectives and experiences knowing they drive innovation and bring us closer to our users.

Were 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. Were continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have.

AI Disclosure: We use AI tools (Google Gemini) to help our team source and review applications for roles with a high volume of applications. These tools assist our recruiters in identifying great talent but do not replace human decision-making. At Depop every hiring decision is made by a human.

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 .

We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our AdTech team helping to build and scale the systems that power advertising and monetisation across Depop. Youll work on backend services that enable relevant performant and privacy-conscious ad experiences for millions of users.

Youll collaborate closely with Product Managers Data Scientists and Engineers across the organisation to develop and deliver systems that balance user experience advertiser value and platform integrity.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Product Data Science and Engineering teams to design and build scalable AdTech systems that support ad delivery ranking and measurement.

• Develop and maintain backend services that operate at high scale and low latency supporting real-time decision making.

• Contribute to the design of event-driven systems and data pipelines that power experimentation and performance insights.

• Own your services end-to-end including development deployment monitoring and incident response.

• Write high-quality maintainable code and contribute to improving engineering standards performance and reliability.

• Participate in architecture discussions helping evolve systems to support future product and business needs.

• Collaborate with engineers across teams to tackle complex problems and deliver impactful features.

• Support a culture of continuous improvement through code reviews post-mortems and knowledge sharing.

• Mentor and support other engineers contributing to the growth of the team.

Qualifications

Youll be an excellent fit if you have:

• Experience building and operating scalable backend systems ideally in a consumer or marketplace environment.

• Strong programming skills in Scala (or willingness to learn) Java or similar backend languages.

• Experience designing and working with distributed systems and event-driven architectures.

• Familiarity with messaging systems such as Kafka or RabbitMQ.

• Experience working with relational or non-relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL DynamoDB).

• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and modern DevOps practices (CI/CD).

• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently while collaborating effectively with others.

• Good communication skills and the ability to work cross-functionally with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Bonus Points:

• You have experience working in AdTech recommendations ranking or experimentation platforms.

• Youve worked with high-throughput systems handling real-time data or decisioning.

• Experience in eCommerce marketplaces or data-driven product environments.

• Familiar with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform.

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 annual leave with option to carry over up to 5 days

• 1 company-wide day off per quarter

• Impact hours: Up to 2 days additional paid leave per year for volunteering

• Fully paid 4 week sabbatical after completion of 5 years of consecutive service with Depop 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 dependant

• All offices are dog-friendly

• Ability to work abroad for 4 weeks per year in UK tax treaty countries

Family Life:

• 18 weeks of 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 3x 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!