Backend Engineer

Location: Very flexible - we’re happy for folks to work WFH and lots of us do. We only ask that you come into our London office a couple of times a month for team strategy days and socials - but of course, you're more than welcome to come in as much as you like! (+ we're working a 4 day work week - Fridays off!)

Salary: £76,000 - £93,500 + share options + benefits listed below

About Cuvva

We are making cars multiplayer

We’re creating truly flexible products that meet people’s real needs. Using lightning-fast technology to unlock better experiences and fairer prices for our customers, Cuvva is building the future of insurance every day.

Cuvva was the first to sell hourly insurance to borrow a car through an app in the UK back in 2016. And we haven’t stopped innovating since. We’ve sold nearly 9 million policies, and supported over 1 million drivers and we’re just getting started. We’re a world-class team of 100 people, passionate about solving our customers’ problems. Join us.

The Cuvva Culture & Values:

• We don’t cut corners. We try to do the right thing, even when that makes life more difficult for us

• We’ll speak up when we have an idea – but we know when to let go and get behind something else 💡

• And we’re comfortable giving and receiving honest feedback, and trying new ways of doing things. It’s the Cuvva way.

• We’re building a diverse team with different backgrounds, outlooks and experiences. So we give everyone a fair chance of getting a role at Cuvva.

Our Product Engineering teams

We have the following  cross-functional product teams, as our new Backend  Engineer, we’ll be looking for you to join our IS&P Team

• Insurance Systems & Platform Team - From improvements in our insurance systems, to Cuvva’s infrastructure maintenance and improved developer experience, our goal is to enable and support other teams. Simply put, we help others move faster.

• On-Demand -  Our team is focussed on growing our short-term car insurance product, supporting over £4 million in monthly sales. As a cross-functional team, we strive to enhance the user experience by introducing new features and improving conversion rates, all while supporting the growth of the business.

• Lenders - We’re driven to make it as easy and rewarding as possible for people to share their vehicles with others

• Borrowers - Creating functionality to  improve the discoverability of vehicles and increase in policies by promoting short term borrowing

Each product team autonomously owns an area of the Cuvva product. Teams are made up of Engineers from multiple disciplines across Backend, Full Stack, iOS, Android & Cloud, we also have a Design Experience team that partners closely with us, as well as, a dedicated Product Manager & Engineering Manager best placed for direction, support and guidance.

Engineers at Cuvva come from a variety of backgrounds and have different but complementary skill sets for ultimate collaboration. Within Engineering, you’re not  required  to have a computer science degree, many of us are self-taught.

Our Tech Stack:

Our backend is made up of many standalone services with a JSON-based RPC interface. We aim to create a client-agnostic API design suitable for a variety of clients (mobile apps, website, internal tooling, 3rd parties). Because we’re a regulated financial company, we have interesting and rigorous requirements to meet with regards to data security and auditability.

Most systems are written in Go. A few older ones are NodeJS, backed by either PostgreSQL or MongoDB and are hosted in a container environment. We heavily lean on AWS infrastructure, and occasionally build integrations with third-party systems in the insurance industry.

About the role:

As a Backend Engineer, you’ll have the opportunity to identify and solve problems in the product (both functional and technical) and be able to support, partner, influence and pair on tasks across the wider Product Engineering team to make informed decisions and have better learning opportunities. 

With your customer centric and product focussed mindset,  you’ll lean on your understanding of true Product Engineering principles and ways of working. You’ll collaborate with designers to contribute to and expand our design systems, often lead and participate in technical specification documents and sessions; you’ll also,  scope, design and implement new features in collaboration with Product Managers and fellow Engineers

You’ll help the team achieve their goals – whether that’s building a new service in our backend platform, creating a new version of an existing API to deliver a new feature, or creating a CLI tool to automate something.

On a day-to-day basis you’ll:

• Write clean, concise, maintainable, scaleable and well-tested code, being able to self review, break down, and make improvements to your own work whilst  taking part in the entire product development process from problem-discovery to solution design, to implementation and rollout

• Architect, plan, and structure new features with your team, whilst maintaining the functionality of services, ensure infrastructure changes and improvements, improve our continuous deployment processes and overall, make our products more accessible, secure and performant

• Troubleshoot and debug issues across the stack, from infrastructure to application code, and implement effective solutions in a timely manner, whilst support in performing write ups of any incidents that occur

• Write comprehensive tests and participate in code reviews to ensure the reliability, stability, and security of our systems.

• Get involved in Scrum based ceremonies e.g daily standups and retrospectives, have weekly 1:1s with your line manager, and maintain visibility of your tasks at hand, we use Shortcut as our ticketing system

• Have a high degree of emotional intelligence, with an understanding that being able to write “good code” is only one  part of your role, we expect you to support us in building a great company culture, and discipline specific community

You’ll do great here if you have: 

• The ability to be adaptable and embrace change initiatives whilst enthusiastically collaborating with peers and through your demeanour, you’re mindful of your interactions and tone of voice

• Proven experience in Node JS or Golang (personal project work included)

• Experience with cloud infrastructure (we are on AWS, but GCP, Azure, etc. would work)

• Experience with automated testing

• Working knowledge of git

• A strong eye for detail, not shy away from building new and existing features within the codebase; and have a genuine interest in knowledge sharing and collaboration

• A demonstrable commitment to continuous learning by attending relevant workshops, conferences, or online courses, and applying new knowledge to improve your skills and stay updated with industry trends

• A genuine passion for building meaningful products, working with driven colleagues and want to be part of making a difference in the world of InsurTech 

It’s a bonus if you: 

• Have experience working with Terraform or other infrastructure as a code tools

• Have experience working with Lambda and Lambda@Edge

• Have experience working with cache, like Redis or Memcached

• Have experience working with Docker and Kubernetes

Benefits:

As well as a competitive salary (£76k-£93.5k depending on experience) and equity based remuneration, benefits of working at Cuvva include:

• Very flexible WFH set up, we only ask folks to come in a couple of times a month for team strategy days and socials - but of course, you're more than welcome to come in as much as you like! 

• A four day work week (Fridays off!) 

• Transparent salary model and bands for all roles (without sharing anyones individual salary of course!) 

• 21 days of holiday a year + public holidays - rising with each year at Cuvva 🌞 (holidays have been prorated based on our 4DWW)

• Professional development budget

• Health, WFH and wellbeing budget 🧘‍♂️

• Increases to all allowances year on year

• Enhanced parental leave

• We’ll provide you with any tech equipment that you need

• Cycle to work scheme

• A day off to volunteer

• Mental Health and Coaching Support - We offer free, unlimited and confidential access to comprehensive mental healthcare and coaching through Oliva. Giving you the space to talk to a coach or therapist about anything you like

• Salary sacrifice scheme for electric car lease

• Hundreds of perks, discounts and flexi points for freebies

• Babylon Health, for online GP appointments, referrals and prescriptions

• £100 a month towards your Cuvva car insurance

• Referral bonus when you bring your friends to join the Cuvva team

Workplace Experience: 

• Office library full of great books

• Fully stocked fridge and snack area

• Monthly team socials virtual and in-person (we’ve done things like; Toca social, neon sign making, Dabbers bingo, an online wine tasting, and themed virtual pub quizzes)