Software Engineer (SDE I)
Published on February 08, 2024
We’re on a mission to change the way people buy, sell or use a car by creating the world’s best online car marketplace. Since starting our journey in 2011, we’ve grown to become one of the most trusted comparison sites with over 12 million active users and an ‘excellent’ Trustpilot rating of 4.7. carwow is backed by some of Europe’s most respected technology, marketplace and automotive investors, with $55 million Series D funding secured in December 2021. Over 400 carwowers from 25 nationalities work with us in the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal. One of our goals for 2023 is to become a Top 10 European Start-Up to work for.
About Carwow
We’re Carwow. The car-changing experts for life-changing moments. Whether buying, selling, or (car) window shopping, we aim to give people total confidence in their choice.
We kicked off our journey as the ultimate matchmaker for car reviews, helping everyone pick their perfect ride. But we soon realised this wasn’t the destination - it was just the first leg. Why stop there when we could also help them get a great price?
So we decided we wanted to revolutionise selling cars, just like we did with buying them. That's when we introduced our game-changing 'sell my car' product.
Today, our dedicated team of over 350 experts across the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal look after over 12 million active users (and an ‘excellent’ Trustpilot rating).
And we’ve got plenty left in the tank.
Working here
So, what does Carwow look like under the hood?
We’re always driving forward, and our people love what they do and love working together. Our goal is to empower our employees to discover their passions, create common ground, and take control of their careers with confidence.
We regularly fine-tune our hiring process to ensure fairness and all Carwowers receive comprehensive DE&I training. Our Diversity Committees, led by our fantastic employees, fuel internal education, help out our local communities, and champion initiatives for our customers.
We’re also Flexa100 nominated and aim to be the go-to place for changing cars. We’re proud to say we’ve got an impressive employee average engagement score of 8.5/10!
Bonding as a team is important to us - whether we're rocking the Carwow Olympics worldwide, playing drag bingo for Pride Month, taking part in beach clean-ups or rallying on the Padel court, there’s always something to bring us together.
Fancy a life-changing career from the car-changing pros? We’d love you to join us on our journey.
About the team
As a team our mission is to create a technology driven company where we are empowered to use our skills to solve difficult problems and scale the product.
To achieve this, we are looking to hire software developers that are passionate about developing simple solutions for complex problems. Successful candidates will work with our team in a full-stack position.
Our tech stack is primarily Ruby on Rails using PostgreSQL, all hosted on Heroku. We use Terraform to manage our infrastructure and encourage teams to be involved in how we deploy and run our code in Production.
You'll be supported by one of our Engineering Managers who are there to help you with your career progression and ensure that the team you are on are working as well as they can - continuously improving!
We have a career progression framework that means you know what is expected of you and how you can progress through our career ladder and your EM will work with you to make sure you are happy, fulfilled, and doing the best work you can be doing.
About the role
Software engineers at carwow work on cross-functional product teams of product managers, engineers, designers and data analysts. You will work closely with a Product Manager and a Tech Lead on deciding what features to build for customers, break down and build features with the team, review code, mentor engineers, ensure operational excellence, and share knowledge broadly across the engineering organisation.
What you’ll be doing
- We love solving real-world problems!
- We work quickly, releasing code into production multiple times daily. You’ll see your code go live continuously.
- You’d be part of a growing team building a platform that will help define the future of car buying.
- We’re a curious bunch driven by a common goal of "How can we make it better?
- We work hard to ensure our people have the right level of autonomy, support and sense of purpose to really flourish in their careers.
What you’ll need
Please note: We know that no candidate will be the perfect match for all we've listed in this posting, so we’d encourage you to apply if you feel you're close to the brief but not an exact match.
Time spent in software engineering roles is of course important, but we prioritise attitude, aptitude, and the kind of impact you’ve had over years' experience. Ideally you’ll have:
- For this role, we would consider people who have zero or up to 18 months of experience working in a professional ruby environment
- Have a good grasp of Ruby, both plain and with frameworks (e.g. Ruby on Rails)
- Cares about well-tested code
- Likes the idea of working on a large, consumer facing site that uses event-driven systems throughout (we use Kafka)
- Are comfortable using git or other source control system proficiently
- Wants to work in a metrics driven environment and cares about the outcomes of your work
- Are self-driven and take responsibility for product outcomes, doing whatever’s necessary to make things happen.
- Enjoy working in distributed teams and working cross-functionally with Product managers, designers, user researchers and other developers,
- Write code to be maintained – with good documentation, tests, and structure
- Are keen to learn continuously, share knowledge, communicate effectively and build a product in close collaboration with others
You’re not expected to be an expert in all of these technologies and tools, we are happy to support your learning journey. If you’re unsure about any of the above, please apply.
What's in it for you
- Fully remote working role, with offices in London, Munich, Madrid, and Porto that you can work from
- 4-5 trips yearly to the London office for social and team bonding events
- Competitive salary to fund that dream holiday to Bali
- Share options - when we thrive, so do you!
- Vitality Private Healthcare, for peace of mind
- Monthly coaching sessions with Spill - our mental wellbeing partner
- Enhanced holiday package, plus bank holidays
- 28 days annual leave
- 1 day for your wedding
- 1 day off when you move house - because moving’s hard enough without work!
- On your third year anniversary, you get 30 days of annual leave per year
- On your tenth year anniversary, you get 35 days of annual leave per year
- Option to buy 3 extra days of holiday per year
- Work from abroad for a month (due to popular demand, this offer excludes the moon).
- Inclusive parental, partner and shared parental leave, fertility treatment and pregnancy loss policies
- The latest tech (Macbook or Surface) to power your gif-sending talents
- Up to £500/€550 home office allowance for that massage chair you’ve been talking about
- A generous learning and development budget to help you master your craft
- Regular social events:, tech lunches, coffee with the exec sessions, book clubs, social events/anything else you pester us for
- Refer a friend, get paid. Repeat for infinite money
- Lunch & learns and Carwow Classrooms with expert speakers who are here for a free lunch
Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We know that diverse teams are strong teams, so we welcome those with alternative identities, backgrounds, and experiences to apply for this position. We make recruiting decisions based on experience, skills and potential, so all our applicants are treated fairly and equally.