Senior Backend Engineer - remote

Motorway
Posted 3 years ago
Motorway is reinventing how cars are bought and sold online. Our mission is to bring the car industry into the future through ground-breaking products and best in class technology. 

Founded in 2017 we are growing rapidly and power thousands of vehicle transactions every Month.

Our key products are:

  • The first comparison website for selling your car (motorway.co.uk), enabling sellers to compare multiple real time offers from car buying companies and sell their car in 24 hours. This is a high scale web application with 350,000 users per month.
  • An online marketplace for used cars (pro.motorway.co.uk) where professional dealers can search, view and bid on vehicles for sale. This is a brand new product with an aggressive roadmap to develop into a full B2B SaaS tool.
  • The technical platform that manages vehicle, seller and buyer data and powers our user-facing web apps. The platform deals with large volumes of data and interfaces with dozens of third party APIs and services.

We operate a Javascript monostack, using the latest JS features heavily. We use PostgreSQL with the Sequelize ORM and Redis databases. We are currently deployed on Heroku using a microservices architecture. Our team uses Git flow on Github, and we have an agile development process.

We are looking for a talented senior developer with strong backend development, Javascript and DevOps experience to join us and help develop the technology and tools to power the next step of our journey.

This is a varied role where you’ll work on everything from architecting new features to
performance optimisation;and on apps designed for consumers through to expert users.

It’s an opportunity to join a fast-growing startup in the early stages, build amazing products with a high degree of influence, and change an industry.

Your responsibilities will include:
  • Architecting and developing Javascript code, launching new features and optimising performance
  • Solving interesting performance and caching problems as our traffic continues to scale
  • Developing the code and business logic for the backend platform that powers the whole business
  • Organising and structuring platform code to make it highly efficient, maintainable and reusable
  • Working with third party APIs and web services (REST, SOAP, etc) to provide real-time valuations and submit vehicle and customer information to car buyers
  • Working with our data layer (PostgreSQL &Redis), helping to make changes to the schema and creating tools and reports to help us understand our performance
  • Working with our infrastructure (currently Heroku and AWS) to scale as we grow, and provide the highest possible performance
  • Working in our flat-structured development team, and getting involved in the technical and product strategy of the business
  • Working closely with front-end, design and product teams to support client apps
  • Championing and implementing software development best practices to ensure our code is high quality, well-tested, scalable and secure
  • Experimenting with new techniques, tools and frameworks to keep us at the cutting edge of modern Javascript development
  • You’ll perform this role across all our collection of microservices (node.js with Express and Sequelize) that power our user-facing applications through RESTful APIs.

Requirements for this role:
  • Strong demonstrable level of commercial experience working with web apps, websites and APIs in production environment
  • Experience working with JavaScript. In particular we are interested in people with experience of ES2016/2017 features, and technologies and frameworks such as node.js, Express and Sequelize
  • Experience working with relational databases and NoSQL databases, including complex queries and performance optimization
  • Experience configuring, deploying and monitoring apps and websites on PaaS services such as Heroku or AWS
  • Experience working with version control, automated testing and continuous integration
  • Experience of agile software development practices and working collaboratively in a team environment
  • A passion for technology and software, demonstrated by personal projects, blog posts or contributions to open source projects
  • A can-do attitude with a willingness to work hard, both on your own and as part of a team
  • Ambition to develop and be the best at what you do
  • A degree in Computer Science;or a maths, science or engineering subject is a plus

What we offer
  • A competitive salary 
  • Enhanced Maternity/Paternity leave
  • £500 annual learning budget
  • Pension Scheme
  • Flexible working (approximately 2-3 days in the office a week)
  • The option to work remote for a full month each year
  • £2,500 equipment allowance with flexibility to choose Mac or Windows and peripherals
  • Regular social events
  • Discounted Calm membership
  • The chance to join a rapidly growing company that cares first and foremost about its people
  • The chance to work with an experienced and passionate team with a big vision
  • The opportunity to build products that have real impact and will change an industry

Equal Opportunities Statement:
 
Motorway is committed to equality of opportunity for all employees. We work to provide a supportive and inclusive environment where all individuals can maximise their full potential. We believe our workforce should reflect a variety of backgrounds, talents, perspectives and experiences. Our strong commitment to a culture of inclusion is evident through our constant focus on recruiting, developing and advancing individuals based on their skills and talents.
 
We welcome applications from all individuals regardless of age, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and marriage and civil partnerships.
 
Given the continued spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus), all interviews will be conducted by phone or virtual connection to protect our candidates and employees.