Back End Engineer

Hybrid in London, UK

The company

Imagine a world where every small business has the power to thrive. That's the world we're building at iwoca. Small businesses aren't just statistics – they're the heartbeat of our communities, the character of our high streets, and the engine of our economy. Since 2012, we've revolutionised how these businesses access finance, turning what was once a lengthy, frustrating process into something remarkable: funding that's fast, flexible, and actually works for modern businesses.

Our impact speaks for itself: we've provided billions in funding to over 150,000 businesses across Europe, making us one of the continent's leading fintech innovators. But we're just getting started. Our mission? To empower one million businesses with the financial tools they deserve.

We combine cutting-edge technology and data science with genuine human understanding to make finance feel less like a barrier and more like a superpower. Whether it's managing cash flow or seizing unexpected opportunities, we ensure businesses get the funds they need – often within minutes.

The team

More than half of iwoca’s lending goes to repeat customers. The Repeats team shapes iwoca’s product offering and user experience for those customers by using the scientific method to maximise an internal metric. As the team works to maximise a metric rather than reporting to a stakeholder, they enjoy a high degree of autonomy in choosing how to optimise these areas.

The team has a data scientist (with a second joining soon), a front-end engineer and two back-end engineers (you would be the third).

The role

• Autonomy: Own projects end to end, from scoping and design to execution. Lead multi-engineer projects, coordinating with analysts, product managers, and other stakeholders.

• Impact: Enhance our offerings to meet the needs of repeat customers, improving their access to tailored lending solutions.

• Shaping Systems: Design and maintain robust, flexible, and maintainable systems to ensure scalability and fast-paced development.

• Learning Through Iteration: Embrace a culture of experimentation, using trial and error to uncover insights, refine approaches, and grow your technical and strategic skills.

• Continuous Deployment: Work iteratively, supported by high test coverage, and contribute to the team’s frequent deployment cycles (averaging more than once per day).

• Data-Driven Decision-Making: Use hypothesis testing and metrics such as issuance and profitability to quickly iterate and optimise our approach.

The projects

• Instant decisions: We can sometimes make instant decisions by using fresh, automatically collected data to refresh a customers’ previous decision (made by a credit analyst). We’ll make improvements to this process to allow instant decisions for larger amounts and for more customers.

• Offer amount testing: Implement a test that will help us understand how offer amount affects customer behaviour, issuance, and loss. This should allow us to increase issuance and better meet our customers’ needs.

• New product features: We’re striving to offer our customers as much flexibility as possible, while making the product easy for them to understand and use. Although we can’t share details of unreleased features, some recent highlights include interest-only periods (where for the first few repayments, the customer only repays interest), and the option to extend these periods.

The requirements

Essential:

• Experience in back end engineering, ideally with Python.

• Ability to manage projects end-to-end; understanding a business problem, designing and executing a solution, and communicating with stakeholders. 

Bonus:

• An understanding of data analysis and statistics.

• A strong numerical or technical background, underpinned by a degree in maths, physics, computer science, engineering, or a related field.

• Experience with Django.

• Experience with relational databases (ideally PostgreSQL).

The salary

We expect to pay from £70,000 - £90,000 for this role. But, we’re open-minded, so definitely include your salary goals with your application. We routinely benchmark salaries against market rates, and run quarterly performance and salary reviews. 

The culture

At iwoca, we prioritise a culture of learning, growth, and support, and invest in the professional development of our team members. We value diversity in thought and skill, and encourage you to explore new areas of interest to help us improve our products and services.

The offices

We put a lot of effort into making iwoca a brilliant place to work:

• Offices in London, Leeds, and Frankfurt with plenty of drinks and snacks

• Events and clubs, like bingo, comedy nights, yoga classes, football, etc.

The benefits

• Flexible working. 

• Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership 

• A private GP service (separate from Vitality) for you, your partner, and your dependents.

• 25 days’ holiday, an extra day off for your birthday, the option to buy or sell an additional five days of annual leave, and unlimited unpaid leave 

• A one-month, fully paid sabbatical after four years.

• Instant access to emotional and mental health support.

• 3% Pension contributions and share options.

• Generous parental leave and a nursery tax benefit scheme to help you save money.

• Cycle-to-work scheme and electric car scheme.

• Two company retreats a year, we’ve been to France, Italy, Spain, and further afield.

And to make sure we all keep learning, we offer:

• A learning and development budget for everyone.

• Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers.

• Access to learning platforms like Treehouse.