Backend Software Engineer (Remote, UK)

About Esenda Esenda powers over £1.5bn of inbound and outbound payments annually, in the education space - from tuition and catering fees to supplier payments and payroll. We’re a revenue-generating startup with strong product-market fit, and we’re growing fast. Join us now and you’ll work on impactful features that directly shape our platform and make a real difference to our customers.

What you’ll do Design, build, and ship reliable backend services and APIs in Python (Flask) that power core product functionality. Own features end-to-end: data modelling (Postgres), API design, testing, production rollout and ongoing improvements. Help uphold strong engineering standards through thoughtful code reviews, testing discipline, clean architecture, and pragmatic decision-making.

Improve service reliability and operability: monitoring, alerting, logging, runbooks, and reducing on-call toil over time. Work closely with the technical team to scope product ideas, focused on delivering customer-facing outcomes (not just “tickets”). Contribute to delivery practices: CI/CD improvements, incremental shipping, and maintaining a high-quality codebase.

You’ll join an on-call rotation (1 week in 4) compensation: paid as an extra £300 per on-call week. What we’re looking for 5+ years experience building and operating production backend systems. Strong experience with Python, and hands-on use of Flask (or similar frameworks).

Solid understanding of Postgres (schemas, migrations, query performance, transactions). Experience designing and maintaining APIs (REST; event-driven experience is a plus). Comfortable shipping in cloud environments—ideally AWS—and working with modern CI/CD pipelines.

A strong quality mindset: you care about maintainability, security, reliability, and clear documentation. Bonus points for Payments/fintech knowledge (reconciliation, idempotency, auditability, ledger concepts). Experience with distributed systems patterns (queues, background jobs, retries, rate limiting).

Security experience (threat modelling, OWASP-style concerns, secure API design). Familiarity with Terraform. Why join us? £60k salary + equity 40 days holiday (incl. bank holidays) Pension scheme (3% employer contribution) Fully remote, UK-based, with 3 in-person meetups per year A transparent, collaborative, and supportive culture Our stack (today) Backend: Python, Flask Data: Postgres Cloud: AWS Edge: Cloudflare Infrastructure as Code: Terraform Delivery: CI/CD, automated testing, observability tooling How we work Pragmatic, high-ownership teams with a bias to shipping Clear communication, strong collaboration, and continuous improvement Code reviews and sensible standards that keep quality high without slowing delivery Interview process 30-min intro call (role fit, values, ways of working) Practical exercise (small take-home or pairing session) Technical interview (backend fundamentals, API design, production thinking) Team chat + Q&A