Senior/Principal Software Engineer

About you

You are an experienced and accomplished backend software engineer and you are looking for a new challenge. Somewhere you can actually add value and make a difference rather than being another cog in the wheel. We have a great engineering team who are looking for someone with your seniority and skillset to help us achieve our goals.

You love data and love working with data on a daily basis. Our products are all based around data, and we are using the latest and greatest tech to change our industry for the better. We are evolving our tech all of the time and you want to be an influence of that. You have strong opinions on what good tech looks like and you want to be heard. We are listening.

Whilst you are experienced and at a senior or principal level in your current or most recent position, you want to grow and understand that there is no ceiling. You want to give your experience and knowledge to something special and be part of its journey but you also want to grow and develop into a better engineer than you are now. You want to work with great people and be mentored by a leadership team that you can actually respect and learn from.

You are enthusiastic and resourceful whilst being passionate about building great products, who loves being part of a team whilst enjoying the autonomous nature of working remotely.

About the role

We are looking for a backend engineer at a senior or principal level to bring their wealth of experience to our team to assist us during our most exciting period of growth.

You will largely be working with our SaaS tools. You will be responsible for the architecture and the backend of these tools, making them fast and reliable.

As the senior person in the team, you will be the go-to technical person for backend components that your team is responsible for. Your experience will enable you to advise on complex technical issues, as well as research and propose new tools, techniques, and solutions to streamline development activities.

Creating well-tested, performant, reliable, scalable, and well-documented components and systems will be something that you do on a daily basis. You will also help your team along on a continuous learning cycle by reviewing and providing feedback on the work done by your team members. As a key member of the team, you will be a point of contact for Customer and Technical Support in solving escalated customer issues for the components and systems that are within your areas of expertise.

Your team will benefit from your guidance in improving both technical and non-technical aspects of their work. You will further help the team with short- to medium-term strategic technical directions by identifying areas of greatest need and creating plans to improve them. Collaboration is important too and you will be there to facilitate cross-team work to help achieve company objectives.

About us

Using big data and predictive analytics, Cazana analyses millions of automotive transactions daily to assess the value and risk associated with every vehicle on the road, enabling more accurate valuation and pricing in vehicle purchasing and insuring. We aim to make the car market (across all its service lines) fairer through a wholesale modernisation in its approach to pricing.

Founded in 2013, we are disrupting an industry that has typically been associated with mistrust due to the lack of accurate data. We use innovative AI and data science-driven modelling in a sector that can feel dated and we have developed the industry's first real-time retail-driven valuations. Our systems are used by insurers, dealerships, finance companies, and manufacturers globally.

Our mission is to set the world standard in automotive data. We create a fairer market for all by embedding unique data and accurate insight into automotive businesses globally.

• Fairer to insurers: Avoid fraud. Price every policy correctly.
• Fairer to policyholders: Pay the right premium. Have claims settled fairly and fast.
• Fairer to the planet: Make electric vehicles and new fuel types accessible to all with accurate future values enabling finance and subscription business models.
• Fairer to lenders: Lend based on fact, not anecdotes to reduce risk.
• Fairer to dealers: Stock the right vehicles. Achieve a fair price for them all.

Our Tech Stack

• Languages: TypeScript, Python, Vue
• Infrastructure: ECS, RDS (PostgreSQL), ElastiCache (Redis), DynamoDB, S3, Elasticsearch, Terraform
• API gateway: Kong
• Monitoring/metrics: Datadog

What do you get (remuneration & benefits)?

• Competitive base salary (disclosed at first stage screening).
• All the equipment you need to get the job done.
• The ability to work where and when you want in order to get the job done (remote and flexible working welcome).
• A central London office and meeting space to use when you need it.
• Access to free counselling, therapy and mental health support via Spill.
• Access to free personal/professional coaching via a trained internal coach.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• 25 days holiday, all bank holidays off and any period of closure over Christmas also paid.
• Learning and training supported.
• Ability to make your mark on a fast-growing start-up that is disrupting a huge (£34bn annual) industry.

The skills, attributes, and experience you must have:

• Degree in Computer Science or similar, or highly knowledgeable about Computer Science or Software Engineering.
• At least 3 years' commercial experience working with Node.js using TypeScript or JavaScript. (If your experience is mainly with JavaScript, then you should have dabbled with TypeScript, professionally or in your own projects.)
• Experience applying good engineering practices, e.g., design principles and patterns, TDD.
• Experience creating APIs.
• Experience working with cloud platforms.
• Being an autodidact and having an interest in technology.

Skills, attributes and experience it would be nice for you to have:

• Significant experience working with TypeScript.
• Experience working with AWS.
• Experience mentoring or guiding junior members in your team.
• Knowledge of or experience with security engineering.

Our application process:

We want to make sure we hire the best available talent! We had a fantastic 2020 with all of our hires hitting the ground running. We are excited to do the same in 2021.

Every role is crucial to us at this stage of our growth. We are improving and evolving our recruitment and application process on a monthly basis. We are trying to remove any bias from our recruitment process, this is an on-going issue in the recruitment function for companies of all sizes.

To help achieve this we have refined our application form that you will find when you click 'Apply for this job'. The answers to the questions are the difference between your application being progressed or not so please do give them your time and effort when answering. The first thing our Talent Partner will review is these questions (we may not even need to review your CV depending on your answers). Good luck with your application and thank you in advance for your interest in joining us at Cazana.