Backend Engineer, Backend Core

At Pleo, we’re on a mission to revolutionise the way businesses manage company spending. No more outdated processes, clunky spreadsheets, or frustrating delays - we believe spend management should be seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike. We’re creating tools that promote autonomy, foster trust, and let businesses focus on what truly matters. Our culture is built on transparency, collaboration, and a deep commitment to innovation – which is reflected in our spending solution. At Pleo, you’ll join a passionate team shaping the future of work, all while having some fun along the way.

About the Role

We're looking for a Backend Engineer to join our Backend Core team at Pleo. The Backend Core team is part of the Backend and Infrastructure Platform group together with the Security, Developer Experience, and SRE teams. As an engineer on the Backend Core team, you will build first-class tooling, libraries, and paved paths to support Pleo's engineering community. You will have the opportunity to help design, develop, and shape how we build scalable, robust, distributed products. You’ll work closely with teams within the group and across product engineering. This presents an excellent opportunity to continue growing in your role and both broaden and deepen your skills.

In this role, you'll help build and scale our backend systems and be part of exciting projects as we continue to grow our product and service offerings. If you're passionate about solving complex technical challenges, developing high-impact solutions, and want to work in a culture that values transparency, collaboration, and a deep commitment to innovation, then this role is for you.

What you’ll be doing

As a Backend Engineer, you will:

• Design and build tooling for scalable systems primarily using Kotlin.
• Break down complexity and work with the team to ensure scalability, maintainability, and testability.
• Ship services and tools that greatly increase developer productivity and application quality.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop innovative solutions across Pleo.
• Continue to refine and define our tech stack and implement optimisations to ensure high reliability and scalability.

What you bring

You'll thrive in this role if you have:

• Experience in server-side languages, especially Kotlin, and knowledge of distributed systems, microservices, and cloud environments (e.g., AWS, Kubernetes).
• Proficiency with relational databases like PostgreSQL, testing frameworks (e.g., JUnit, Testcontainers), and observability tools like Grafana.
• A collaborative mindset to problem solve with other engineers and across teams.
• A mindset of maintaining high standards for code quality and reliability.
• A passion for innovation and driving impactful solutions within a fast-paced scale-up environment.

How you’ll develop in this role

In your first six months at Pleo, you’ll:

• Contribute to backend initiatives to improve system performance and scalability. Collaborate with teams to drive innovation in product and infrastructure. Grow your expertise in Kotlin and distributed systems. Contribute to shaping the future of our product as Pleo scales globally.
• We’re committed to supporting your growth, whether through taking on larger projects, stepping into leadership roles, or expanding your technical expertise.

Salary Range

The annual salary for this position varies based on your location:

• United Kingdom: €78,700 -€83,500
• Spain/Portugal: €71,500 - €75,900

We’re happy to share more about our approach to pay and this range during your first call with us!

Check out our Engineering Hiring Blog Post to get an in-depth overview of our hiring process and what to expect. Enjoy the reading!

Benefits

• Your own Pleo card (no more out-of-pocket spending!)
• Lunch is on us for your work days - enjoy catered meals or receive a lunch allowance based on your local office 🍜
• Comprehensive private healthcare - depending on your location, coverage options include Vitality, Alan or Médis
• We offer 25 days of holiday + your public holidays
• For our Team, we offer both hybrid and fully remote working options
• Option to purchase 5 additional days of holiday through a salary sacrifice
• We use MyndUp to give our employees access to free mental health and well-being support with great success so far
• Paid parental leave - we want to make sure that we're supportive of families and help you feel that you don't have to compromise your family due to work 👶

Why join us?

Working at Pleo means you're working on something very exciting: the future of work. Our mission is to help every company go beyond the books. Pleo itself means ‘more than you’d expect’, and it’s been the secret to our success over the last 8 years. So it’s only fitting that we’d pass this philosophy onto our customers to help them make the most of their finances.

We think company spending should be delegated to all employees and teams, that it should be as automated as possible, and that it should drive a culture of responsible spending. Finance teams shouldn’t be siloed from the rest of the organisation – they should work in unity with marketing, sales, IT and everyone else.

Speaking of working in unity, our values tell the story of how we work at Pleo. We have four core values, the first of which is ‘champion the customer’, which means we address real pain points that businesses face. Next up is ‘succeed as a team’, which highlights how our strength lies in our diversity and trust in each other. We also ‘make it happen’ by taking bold decisions and following through to deliver results. Last but not least, we ‘build to scale’, creating lasting solutions that address today’s challenges and anticipate tomorrow’s needs.

So, in a nutshell, that's Pleo. Today we are a 850+ team, from over 100 nations, sitting in our Copenhagen HQ, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Madrid, Montreal and Lisbon offices —and quite a few full-time remotes in 35 other countries! Being HQ'd out of Copenhagen means we're inspired by things like a good work-life balance. If you don't work in the office with us, we'll help you set up the best remote setup possible and make sure you still have time to connect with your team.