Staff Backend Engineer - Data Platform

New Yesterday

Staff Backend Engineer - Data Platform

Team: Engineering & Data

Location: Depop - London

Company Description

Depop is the community-powered circular fashion marketplace where anyone can buy, sell and discover desirable secondhand fashion. With a community of over 35 million users, Depop is on a mission to make fashion circular, redefining fashion consumption. Founded in 2011, the company is headquartered in London, with offices in New York and Manchester, and in 2021 became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Etsy. Find out more at www.depop.com Our mission is to make fashion circular and to create an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome, no matter who they are or where they’re 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. We’re 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. We’re continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have. 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 . For any other non-disability related questions, please reach out to our Talent Partners.

Life is about creating. That's why we're home to over 30 million artists, stylists, designers, sneakerheads — and you? We're the community-powered, circular-minded marketplace changing the world of online fashion. Now it's time to get inspired at Depop.

Responsibilities

Job description

Role

We’re looking for a Staff Backend Engineer – Data Platform to be a key technical leader within the teams responsible for Depop’s data platform. You’ll drive the technical vision and implementation for our foundational data platform — from experimentation, event ingestion pipelines to our data lake, governance frameworks, and data observability and real-time analytics capabilities.

You will work closely with data scientists, machine learning engineers, backend teams, and product leaders, providing deep technical expertise to ensure our data systems are scalable, secure, observable, and enable innovation across the company.

Responsibilities

  • Partner with stakeholders across Product, Data, and Engineering to translate strategic goals into well-architected, scalable platform capabilities.

  • Drive the technical design and implementation of core data platform components, providing hands-on coding and architectural leadership.

  • Define and evolve the technical roadmap for Depop’s modern data platform, ensuring reliable and scalable analytics.

  • Champion engineering excellence, setting high technical standards and advocating for best practices in system design, maintainability, performance, and privacy.

  • Lead efforts in data observability, governance, and privacy-by-design principles, ensuring their robust implementation across the organization.

  • Mentor and coach engineers, elevating the technical capabilities of the team and fostering a culture of technical excellence.

  • Identify and address complex technical challenges and bottlenecks, proposing and implementing effective solutions.
     

    • Qualifications

  • Proven experience as a Staff Engineer or equivalent senior technical leadership role in data infrastructure or platform at scale, ideally in a consumer or marketplace environment.

  • Deep understanding of distributed systems and modern data ecosystems — including extensive experience with Databricks, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Apache Beam and DBT.

  • Demonstrated success in designing, building, and operating data platforms at scale, encompassing both batch processing and real-time streaming architectures.

  • Expertise in data warehousing concepts, advanced ETL/ELT processes, and analytics engineering best practices.

  • Exceptional programming skills, particularly in Python, Scala, or Java, and deep expertise with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).

  • Extensive experience working with privacy-sensitive datasets and implementing robust data observability and governance frameworks.

  • A strong technical background with a track record of hands-on architecture and development of complex data systems.

  • Ability to think strategically and pragmatically: you can define long-term technical strategies and execute rapidly.

  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills; you’re comfortable influencing technical direction and aligning diverse stakeholders across the organization.

    • Bonus points:

  • Experience with machine learning infrastructure or ML Ops practices.

  • Familiarity with event-driven architectures in a mobile-first product environment.

  • Prior work in fashion, marketplaces, or sustainability-driven tech.

    • Apply
    Location:
    London
    Job Type:
    FullTime