Overview

Job Title: Senior Backend Engineer

Department: Product Engineering

Basis: Full-time, permanent

Location: Canary Wharf, London - WeWork (Hybrid Remote)

Reporting to: Director of Product Engineering

About Onetrace

— Great products start with great people.

Our relentless focus on user experience has been the cornerstone of our growth, helping us become the market leading software for fire protection subcontractors across the UK. We’ve grown by staying obsessed with building software that actually works for the subcontractors on the ground; fast, intuitive, and simple to use. We’re now gearing up for our next chapter: expanding into new trades and taking Onetrace global. We’re bootstrapped, profitable, and driven by a clear mission - to lead the digital transformation for subcontractors, one trade at a time. Come be part of a team that’s smart, ambitious, and comfortable in the chaos of growth - where your ideas matter, and your work shapes what comes next. Want to learn more about our journey? Check out our LinkedIn page.

Our engineering culture

We’re not your typical “move fast and break things” company. We believe in building thoughtfully and shipping quality software that genuinely helps our customers solve real problems. Working here means being a product engineer, not just a backend or frontend specialist. We care about engineers who understand the bigger picture: the operatives on site, the project teams behind them, and the real-world impact of the tools we ship. You’ll bring curiosity to the “why” behind the work, not just the “how,” and you’ll see your code in action helping people get their jobs done with less friction.

What this means day-to-day:

• Direct customer connection - we encourage you to talk to users and understand their real challenges
• Collaborative partnership - work as equals with product managers and designers to find the best solutions
• End-to-end ownership - care about your work from conception through production and beyond
• Quality focus - balance shipping velocity with code quality and exceptional user experience
• Open communication - speak up with ideas, concerns, and feedback to help the team improve
• Continuous learning - embrace mistakes as learning opportunities and seek better approaches

We value transparency, honest communication, and engineers who genuinely care about the impact of their work. Subcontractors use Onetrace to prove their work has been carried out compliantly, with full traceability from start to finish. That not only makes their day-to-day smoother and more reliable, it also raises the standard across projects — ultimately leading to safer buildings for everyone to live and work in. And we think that’s something worth getting excited about.

Want to go deeper?
If you’re curious about what it’s really like to build at Onetrace, we’ve written more about our approach, straight from the people you’ll be working with:

• Our Product Engineering Culture – by Luca Carangella, Director of Product Engineering, on how we think about engineering and collaboration.
• Building Products for Subcontractors – by Lewis Bird, Co-founder & CTO, on our product philosophy and the landscape we’re building for

Responsibilities

The role As a Senior Backend Engineer at Onetrace, you’ll strengthen our backend systems and empower the entire engineering team to build with confidence and velocity. You’ll tackle technical debt, evolve our architecture for scale, and create well-documented patterns and tooling that make our platform more resilient, performant, and developer-friendly. This isn’t a role where you “own the backend” in isolation. You’ll collaborate across the stack, working closely with other engineers, product managers, and designers to ensure our platform foundations enable great product experiences. From refining API design to optimising performance and observability, you’ll be the driving force behind the systems that keep Onetrace running smoothly and growing fast.

What you’ll do

• Design, build, and maintain backend services using Node.js and TypeScript
• Evolve our architecture for scalability, performance, and maintainability
• Refactor and modernise legacy systems to reduce technical debt
• Design and enhance RESTful APIs, ensuring consistency, security, and clear documentation
• Integrate with both internal and external services, building reliable, well-tested connections
• Implement and improve observability: logging, metrics, monitoring, and alerting
• Optimise database performance across MongoDB and SQL-based systems
• Introduce and maintain patterns, tooling, and frameworks that improve developer experience
• Collaborate cross-functionally to translate product requirements into technical solutions
• Mentor engineers through code reviews, pairing, and knowledge-sharing sessions

Beyond the backend

While your primary focus will be strengthening our backend systems, we’re not looking for someone who only wants to live in that layer. At Onetrace, engineers are expected to think and work like full stack product engineers – flexible, collaborative, and willing to jump into whichever part of the stack will best solve the problem. That might mean refining APIs and scaling services one day, and the next day pairing with a frontend engineer or tweaking infrastructure to remove a bottleneck. If you only want to stay narrowly in the backend, this role isn’t the right fit. But if you enjoy seeing the bigger picture and contributing across boundaries, you’ll feel right at home.

Your tech stack

Essential

• JavaScript / TypeScript – core programming languages
• Node.js – primary backend framework
• MongoDB or other NoSQL database
• SQL databases and query optimisation
• RESTful API design and implementation
• Git – version control and collaborative workflows
• Backend testing strategies (unit, integration, end-to-end)
• Experience with monitoring, logging, and observability tools
• Knowledge of scalable system architecture and design patterns

• Highly desirable
• AdonisJS, NestJS or similar MVC frameworks
• AWS infrastructure and services
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or similar)
• Distributed systems experience
• Message queues and background job processing
• Caching strategies and performance optimisation
• CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices

Nice to have

• Security best-practices implementation
• Experience in a growth-stage startup or B2B SaaS
• Knowledge of the construction industry

Benefits

• 25 days PTO, plus bank holidays
• Enhanced parental leave
• Private medical insurance with Bupa
• NEST pension scheme
• Employee assistance programme
• Remote work abroad opportunities
• Apple MacBook and tech accessories
• Onetrace merch, regular team socials and annual company offsites

Diversity and inclusion

Onetrace is committed to diversity in the workplace and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. If you require a reasonable adjustment, please contact us. All information will be kept confidential and will only be used for applying a reasonable adjustment.

Please note that our office is a dog-friendly environment. Candidates should be aware that dogs are present in the workplace, which may include shared spaces. If you have allergies or concerns, please let us know in advance.