Backend Engineer - Platform Developer Experience

As a Backend Engineer at Spotify, you'll be pivotal in executing our future Continuous Integration (CI) infrastructure strategy. Your role includes architecting, designing, developing, and operating services that enhance the developer experience for over 3,000 engineers. You'll collaborate with various infrastructure teams to push for industry-best practices, drive automation of workflows, mentor fellow engineers, and ensure your components are testable and maintainable.

To thrive as a Backend Engineer in our Platform Developer Experience team, you should have at least 6 years of experience in software engineering, with strong skills in Java and familiarity with Node.js. Experience deploying and implementing solutions in Kubernetes is essential. We also value a proactive mindset toward automation, standardization, and continuous improvement of the development process.

At Spotify, we strongly believe in internal growth and mentorship. As a Backend Engineer, you will have the opportunity to lead by example, mentoring junior staff and sharing best practices in software engineering. We also encourage continuous learning by providing resources and opportunities for our engineers to improve their skills through collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams.

The work environment at Spotify is flexible and dynamic, providing a mix of in-person collaboration and remote work. While you'll attend in-person meetings a few times a week in London, you're encouraged to work from wherever you are most productive. Our culture promotes collaboration, innovation, and a strong developer experience, making it an exciting place to grow your career.

As a Backend Engineer in the Platform Developer Experience team, you'll collaborate closely with various infrastructure teams across Spotify. This interaction is crucial for defining what constitutes a best-in-class CI infrastructure. You'll work together to streamline processes, share insights, and ensure that we deliver a seamless and effective developer experience throughout the organization's engineering disciplines.

Highlight your direct experience with CI systems, discussing specific tools you have used and the impact of your contributions. Mention any improvements you made in build times or processes.

Share detailed insights into your experience with Kubernetes including deployment, scaling, and managing containerized applications. Provide examples of how you've leveraged Kubernetes to enhance CI processes.

Provide a specific situation where your initiative led to better efficiency, automation, or productivity. Explain the context, actions you took, and the measurable results, emphasizing your role as a problem solver.

Discuss your philosophy on mentorship including specific strategies you employ to foster growth, knowledge sharing, and hands-on learning. Highlight any successful mentoring experiences and their outcomes.

Talk about your commitment to best practices, emphasizing principles like writing clean code, implementing unit tests, continuous integration, and iterative improvement. Share how these practices have impacted your previous projects.

Detail your familiarity with various version control systems, particularly Git. Discuss how you use them in your daily workflow, addressing branches, merges, and conflict resolution strategies.

Explain your openness to constructive criticism, how you incorporate feedback into your work, and any experiences where feedback significantly improved your output and contributed to project success.

Discuss techniques you use to keep your codebase maintainable, such as documentation practices, consistent styling, modular design, and regular code reviews. Emphasize the importance of maintainability in high-scale environments.

Share a specific and complex problem you successfully tackled, detailing your thought process, the resources you utilized, and the final outcome. Highlight any innovative solutions you implemented.

Express your enthusiasm for Spotify's impact in the tech industry, any personal connections to music or tech, and how the role aligns with your career goals. Discuss aspects like the innovative work culture or the opportunity to contribute to a global platform.