Senior Backend Engineer

Our client is an industry-leading provider of branded merchandise and corporate gifting — a go-to for companies wanting high-quality, sustainable swag delivered worldwide. They’ve earned the trust of global giants (think big tech, retail and enterprise names) and have delivered custom packs for clients like Amazon, Meta, Spotify, Intel and Unilever. Their end-to-end service — from design and sourcing through packaging, warehousing, and global distribution — means partners get a full solution without juggling multiple vendors. They focus on premium, useful, and sustainable merchandise, which helps companies make a strong impression on employees, clients, or prospects.

We are hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to build the Supplier Unified Product Feed, a data platform that will consolidate disparate supplier product feeds into a centralised, canonical database with clean APIs and future-ready ML capabilities.
You’ll design robust ingestion pipelines, structure data for fast semantic and attribute-based queries, and help build infrastructure that will support future LLM/AI enhancements like similarity search, recommendations, and automated classification.
This is a role for someone who thrives on complex data normalisation, API design, and backend architecture. You’ll work cross-functionally with product leadership and engineering advisors and help shape core infrastructure with long-term scalability in mind.

• Build and maintain data ingestion pipelines for multiple supplier formats (JSON, CSV, XML, XLSX)
• Design a normalised schema to unify disparate product attributes while preserving supplier-specific detail
• Write ingestion modules in Python and manage scheduling, retries, and incremental updates
• Build and expose APIs in Python (FastAPI or similar) for internal search, stock, pricing, and print capabilities
• Integrate pgvector for semantic embeddings and related product search
• Own PostgreSQL schema, migrations, and data models with high performance in mind
• Collaborate with product leadership to ensure scalability and adaptability of architecture
• Ensure logging, error handling, health checks, and developer documentation are in place
• Plan for future ML integration by preserving embedding-ready fields (titles, materials, sustainability data, etc.)
• Work independently with guidance from the CPO and technical advisors

• 5+ years of backend development experience with Python
• Strong experience with PostgreSQL, including performance optimisation and schema design
• Experience building and maintaining ETL or data ingestion pipelines
• Familiarity with pgvector or embedding/vector databases for semantic search
• Proficiency with Docker, Git, and modern DevOps practices
• Experience with designing and building REST APIs
• Solid understanding of data normalisation, long-tail attributes, and flexible schema patterns (e.g., JSON fields)
• Ability to write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code
• Excellent written documentation skills for handoff and internal onboarding

• Experience with e-commerce product data models
• Experience using LLMs, embedding models, or semantic search tools (e.g., OpenAI, Cohere, HuggingFace)
• Experience with AWS (preferred) or GCP and familiarity with services like S3, Lambda, Redshift, or BigQuery
• Background in data engineering or building scalable data processing systems
• Experience working in startups or small, agile teams
• Exposure to product recommendation systems or merchandising platforms

• Self-starter who can work independently and take ownership of full project scope
• Thrives in ambiguity and can define architecture as well as execute it
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Detail-oriented but pragmatic: understands trade-offs between structure and flexibility
• Comfortable working across time zones with async collaboration tools
• Passionate about building clean, maintainable infrastructure that scales

• Competitive Salary.
• Benefits package include HMO, training allowance, gym or food allowance, educational assistance for dependents, and more.
• An annual salary increase, as laid out in the contract.
• Free food and drinks provided during virtual events.
• Company trips