Senior Backend Engineer

Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

Department: Mobile Fulfilment Systems

Senior Backend Engineer (Java/Scala) | Mobile Fulfilment | Hybrid Working | Sofia

Who are We

The Mobile Fulfilment Systems department at Ocado is at the forefront of developing cutting-edge automation solutions for both in-store and warehouse online order fulfilment. We leverage distributed backend systems, intuitive mobile applications, and advanced autonomous mobile robots to enable fast, scalable, and cost-effective order collection.

As part of our Mobile Fulfilment Systems department, we at In-Store Fulfilment (ISF) design and develop distributed cloud-based systems, PWA mobile applications, and web technologies to automate the fulfilment of online customer orders at scale. 

We’re actively expanding how we use AI across our engineering teams and are looking for strong backend engineers who can help drive this forward. While AI is already part of how we build and ship software, we’re still growing in this space, so we value either hands-on experience or a strong interest in developing it. You’ll help accelerate the adoption of AI practices while continuing to contribute to core engineering work across the team.

What is ISF (In-Store-Fulfilment) 

In-Store Fulfilment is an end-to-end cloud-based solution that enables stores to rapidly and efficiently fulfil online customer orders - enhancing the shopping experience while reducing operational costs.

We operate in over 1,000 stores, across 4 continents and 11 countries. More than 300,000 customer orders go through our system weekly. The system governs all aspects of order fulfilment - routing, cubing optimisations, optimal goods handling, picking, buffering, loading and dispatch. 

As a Senior Software Engineer in our Backend team, you will:

• Design, build, and maintain large-scale, high-availability distributed systems 
• Lead technical initiatives from start to end, fully owning the planning, coordination, design and execution process from discovery to release
• Constantly ensure solutions meet quality standards by utilizing best practices in testing, code quality, monitoring, and alerting
• Contribute to the long-term architectural and product vision
• Embed AI tools — such as Claude Code, Gemini, and GitHub Copilot — into your daily workflow: accelerating delivery, raising code quality, automating repetitive engineering work, and identifying process improvements others miss
• Champion AI adoption within the team: share techniques, run demos, and raise the team's collective fluency over time
• Participate in all stages of the software development life cycle as part of a team following agile practices
• Continuously and proactively improve our processes, ways of working, and tools
• Work directly with the business and product partners to understand and translate new system requirements into engineering solutions
• Participate in our on-call rotation to support our production services
• Coach and train new and existing team members in their growth

We will be looking for:

• Experience building and maintaining backend systems in Java or Scala for high-availability, large-scale production systems
• Excellent knowledge of software engineering best practices and processes
• Hands-on knowledge of system resilience patterns and approaches
• A track record of using AI tools to deliver engineering outcomes — whether that's shipping features faster, improving test coverage, automating operational tasks, or improving team processes
• Comfort and curiosity working with AI-assisted development day-to-day — you don't need to have used every tool, but you should have formed a genuine working practice and an opinion on what works
• Experience with Cloud-based infrastructure and managed services (AWS and/or GCP). We use SQS/SNS, DynamoDB, S3, Kinesis, etc.
• Experience of successfully leading multiple technical initiatives (from discovery and design to implementation and release)
• Demonstrated ability to propose technical solutions to project blockers and have a history of adopting new languages or frameworks to solve problems
• Curiosity and enthusiasm to learn new technologies and the ability to evaluate alternatives, make tradeoffs, and articulate decisions
• Knowledge of or willingness to learn functional programming practices.
• A product- and customer-focused mindset - the technology we use is a tool to deliver the best value for our customers
• Ability to effectively facilitate discussions, document decisions in a well-structured way
• Ability to present technical roadmaps directly to C-level stakeholders

Bonus points for hands-on experience in:

• Experience in JVM languages
• Modelling complex domains and applying Domain-Driven Design practices.
• Modern Scala libraries from the Typelevel or ZIO ecosystems.
• DevOps (CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code, observability tools, resource management).
• NoSQL DBs (e.g., DynamoDB, Apache Cassandra, MongoDB).
• Data Analytics solutions (GC Looker, Big Query, etc.).

In return we can offer you ...

• Hybrid office attendance policy that sees you onsite 40% of your time
• 30 days of “Work from anywhere” program
• 30 days of annual leave
• Share plan program
• 150 EUR additional monthly allowance
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave policy
• Medical plan including health & dental coverage
• Life and disability insurance
• Employee assistance program

We also have regular divisional socials, sports clubs, not to mention the Ocado Technology Academy for a packed schedule of courses, conferences and events. If you think you have what it takes to make a difference, please submit your application below.

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