Junior Backend Engineer

Who we are

A piece of the moon, a complete dinosaur skeleton, the Pope's hat, the world's smallest book - at Catawiki, we come across exceptional objects such as these every day. 

Catawiki is the leading online marketplace to buy and sell special objects. We offer over 75,000 special objects in auction every week — each reviewed and selected by one of Catawiki’s hundreds of in-house experts specialised in Art, Design, Jewellery, Fashion, Classic Cars, Collectables and many more.

We've sold 10 million unique items to date and it’s our mission to become the world’s most popular auction destination for special objects.

We’re an innovative, pioneering and fast-growing scale-up. If you think you can make a difference to our team, go ahead and apply.

About the Job

On our path to becoming the most visited online curated marketplace for special objects, our Engineering team is on a mission to deliver the best experience across our platforms by building best-in-class products for search & discovery, bidding, curation, logistics, payments, and support. 

We're a scale-up with customer-facing challenges dealing with high-scale (75k auctions per week) and high traffic (more than 10 million visitors per month). As a Junior Software Engineer, you’ll support one of our 3 verticals - Demand, Supply, or Fulfilment - improving and delivering product innovations for our platform. 

Working in small, fully autonomous, and highly collaborative Agile teams, you will build scalable, maintainable, and resilient microservices and features. That's why we are looking for bold, curious and open developers! Are you ready to join?

Where you'll be

Our office is located in Amsterdam. We don't sponsor relocation or visas for this role in detail - Please only apply if you have the right to work in the Netherlands.

What you will do 

  • Build: Design, develop, test, deploy, maintain and improve. You’ll be part of a team that is end-to-end responsible for their own microservices.
  • Collaborate: Work closely with product designers, product owners, front, back, and mobile engineers to share new ideas and make our processes even more efficient.
  • Growth: Support our great engineering culture, by documenting and advocating for best development practices - constantly improving the quality of our products by fixing bugs and refactoring the code base where necessary.
  • Learn: Boost your career by testing new technologies and participating in our Technical Week (after 2 product sprints): a week dedicated to promoting creativity, innovation, and knowledge sharing across domains.

What you’ll bring

We look for engineers motivated to learn new things, ship new features, and pursue new and interesting challenges. Our backend stack focuses on Ruby (not too different from Python), and the frontend is mainly built using TypeScript and React. However, if you’re passionate about learning new things, prior experience with Ruby is unnecessary.

As a Junior Engineer, you have a lot of growth and opportunities ahead of you. At Catawiki, we will give you much room to explore your interests and strengths and provide you with the support you need to grow rapidly and become a true back-end professional.

A strong candidate has:

  • At least 1 year of experience in your first full-time job
  • A completed Master's degree
  • Some experience collaborating with others in a professional or academic setting, whether with other engineers and product managers in a software development environment, or similar interactions in another organization, making you a valued member of an autonomous, cross-functional team.
  • You have experience with at least one mainstream programming language (including, without limitation, Ruby, Python, Go, C++, C#, Java, Scala, Kotlin, etc.) and the willingness to learn other programming languages as necessary (we use Ruby).
  • You have some fundamental knowledge of SQL and relational databases.
  • Nice to have: You are familiar with Application Programming Interfaces, whether the API is a web technology such as HTTP, REST, JSON, etc., or another API technology such as gRPC.

Additionally:

  • You are a passionate engineer with a strong eye for detail.
  • You strive to be a great team player and don’t shy away from new challenges.
  • You are someone who takes initiative and is ready to jump in and help if needed.
  • You keep the company's values close to your heart.
  • You enjoy working in a diverse and dynamic environment..
  • You possess a "growth mindset" in which you take the initiative to further your personal skill set as a software developer, whether by learning new skills and/or technologies or by seeking new opportunities

Here’s what we can offer you

This is your chance to join our mission to fulfill people’s passions as part of a young and dynamic organization. You'll be part of an enthusiastic, highly motivated team of 800+ Catawikians.

Additionally, you can expect:

  • A challenging role in a diverse, international and fast-growing organisation with over 50 nationalities.
  • Regular fun activities both on and offline e.g summer parties, boat rides and regular team events.
  • Great secondary benefits including a holiday allowance and a fantastic pension plan paid for by Catawiki.
  • Hybrid ways of working between home and office. We offer remote and activity-based working, suited to the team and individual responsibilities
  • We care about our teams’ wellbeing and offer a holistic wellbeing programme including our Employee Assistance Programme offering clinical services, single-session therapy, wellness support and more.
  • Tailored learning and development opportunities to support your personal and professional growth;

We want to help you celebrate special occasions in life by:

  • Provide employees with a 100 EURO Catavoucher upon joining and 50 EURO birthday Catavouchers;
  • Extra days of annual leave for work anniversaries at 3, 5, 8 and 10 years;
  • Additional leave allowances for important life events such as moving, engagement & marriage;
  • Each year Catawikians get an additional day’s leave to Pursue their Passion!

Please note that our benefits offering changes depending on which country you are employed in. For our country-specific offering please ask your recruiter.

Our commitment to you

Catawiki’s eclectic team represents an international and intergenerational mix of people from different professional and cultural backgrounds. We foster an inclusive and queer-friendly work environment, committed to making every Catawikian feel welcomed and empowered. Whatever your story, we encourage you to bring your unique perspective to the table.

Catawiki stands with Ukraine and encourages people displaced by the current conflict to apply. In addition to the several initiatives we’ve launched, we’re open to ideas on ways we can continue to support the humanitarian effort.

Our offices and way of working

We have sensational offices in Amsterdam, Groningen, Paris and our newest office in Lisbon. Most of our employees are within commutable distance of one of our office locations and enjoy a hybrid work model. This means we expect you to be in the office 2 out of 5 days, roughly 40% of your working time, to collaborate and connect with each other. The exception is of course, if the job description specifically states that the role is 100% remote, as some experts and sales positions are.

Interested?

Apply directly with an English CV and cover letter by submitting your information at the bottom of this page. By submitting your application you agree to Catawiki’s Applicant Privacy Policy.

If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Flexible Working

We’re continually incorporating hybrid elements, while employees choose how they split their work between the office and home.

Excellent benefits
Our benefits are designed to ensure every Catawikian is energised, focused and thriving.
Recognition programme

We strive to be an employer where your impact is meaningful, visible and rewarded.

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