Backend Software Engineer (Remote, UK)

<p><strong>About Esenda</strong> </p><p>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. </p><p><br><br>Not sure what skills you will need for this opportunity Simply read the full description below to get a complete picture of candidate requirements.<br></p><p>We’re a revenue-generating startup with strong product-market fit, and we’re growing fast. </p><p>Join us now and you’ll work on impactful features that directly shape our platform and make a real difference to our customers. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>What you’ll do</strong> </p><ul><li>Design, build, and ship reliable backend services and APIs in Python (Flask) that power core product functionality. </li><li>Own features end-to-end: data modelling (Postgres), API design, testing, production rollout and ongoing improvements.  </li><li>Help uphold strong engineering standards through thoughtful code reviews, testing discipline, clean architecture, and pragmatic decision-making. </li><li>Improve service reliability and operability: monitoring, alerting, logging, runbooks, and reducing on-call toil over time. </li><li>Work closely with the technical team to scope product ideas, focused on delivering customer-facing outcomes (not just “tickets”). </li><li>Contribute to delivery practices: CI/CD improvements, incremental shipping, and maintaining a high-quality codebase. </li><li>You’ll join an on-call rotation (1 week in 4) compensation: paid as an extra £300 per on-call week. </li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>What we’re looking for</strong> </p><ul><li>5+ years experience building and operating production backend systems. </li><li>Strong experience with Python, and hands-on use of Flask (or similar frameworks). </li><li>Solid understanding of Postgres (schemas, migrations, query performance, transactions). </li><li>Experience designing and maintaining APIs (REST; event-driven experience is a plus). </li><li>Comfortable shipping in cloud environments—ideally AWS—and working with modern CI/CD pipelines. </li><li>A strong quality mindset: you care about maintainability, security, reliability, and clear documentation.</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>Bonus points for</strong> </p><ul><li>Payments/fintech knowledge (reconciliation, idempotency, auditability, ledger concepts). </li><li>Experience with distributed systems patterns (queues, background jobs, retries, rate limiting). </li><li>Security experience (threat modelling, OWASP-style concerns, secure API design). </li><li>Familiarity with Terraform. </li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>Why join us?</strong> </p><ul><li>£60k salary + equity </li><li>40 days holiday (incl. xwzovoh bank holidays)  </li><li>Pension scheme (3% employer contribution)  </li><li>Fully remote, UK-based, with 3 in-person meetups per year </li><li>A transparent, collaborative, and supportive culture </li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>Our stack (today)</strong> </p><ul><li>Backend: Python, Flask </li><li>Data: Postgres </li><li>Cloud: AWS </li><li>Edge: Cloudflare </li><li>Infrastructure as Code: Terraform </li><li>Delivery: CI/CD, automated testing, observability tooling </li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>How we work</strong> </p><ul><li>Pragmatic, high-ownership teams with a bias to shipping </li><li>Clear communication, strong collaboration, and continuous improvement </li><li>Code reviews and sensible standards that keep quality high without slowing delivery </li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>Interview process</strong></p><ul><li>30-min intro call (role fit, values, ways of working) </li><li>Practical exercise (small take-home or pairing session) </li><li>Technical interview (backend fundamentals, API design, production thinking) </li><li>Team chat + Q&A </li></ul><br>Remote working/work at home options are available for this role.