Backend Engineer - Sponsored Content & Products (all genders)

We are looking for a Backend Engineer (m/f/d) to join our newly established Sponsored Content & Products team within ABOUT YOU's Retail Media Tech organization.

The Sponsored Content & Products team is a key growth driver. Its mission is to build highly scalable self-serve cost-per-click (CPC) bidding marketplaces that empower brands to efficiently boost their visibility in real time right at the digital point of sale.

This is an exciting technical greenfield opportunity where you will work on building scalable core services from day one, helping shape the product's technical foundation as we scale our infrastructure to support our target of multiplying our Retail Media revenue.

• Write clean, reliable PHP 8.2+ and Laravel code to build backend services and RESTful APIs that power our self-serve CPC bidding marketplace and brand tools
• Write comprehensive unit and integration tests, actively participate in peer code reviews, and identify areas for refactoring to keep high-throughput ad pipelines clean and maintainable
• Partner closely with product managers, frontend engineers, and senior tech leads to break down marketplace features, estimate technical tasks, and translate ad-tech requirements into working code
• Follow established repository structures, coding conventions, and CI/CD pipeline steps to ensure backend updates deploy safely and predictably to production.
• Help monitor application health and debug backend issues, making sure real-time ad serving and bidding endpoints remain fast and reliable
• Integrate modern AI tools like Cursor, Claude Code, or Gemini into your daily workflow to speed up boilerplate creation, test writing, and problem-solving

• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
• At least 3 years of hands-on professional experience in backend software engineering
• Strong experience with modern PHP (8.2+) and frameworks like Laravel, alongside a solid grasp of object-oriented design and clean code practices
• Practical experience building secure RESTful APIs, implementing authentication/authorization, and setting up request validation and rate limiting
• Good working knowledge of relational databases, including writing efficient SQL queries, setting up basic table schemas, using indexes, and running migrations
• Familiarity with application logging, error tracking, and using monitoring tools like Datadog to debug issues in production
• Comfort using modern AI dev tools (such as Cursor, Claude Code, or Gemini) to speed up test writing, boilerplate code, and daily tasks
• A self-motivated mindset with a strong sense of ownership over your features from implementation to production
• A pragmatic approach to engineering that favors shipping clean, reliable code over over-engineering or premature optimization
• Clear communication skills, with the ability to explain technical details and trade-offs simply to non-technical teammates

Nice to have

• AdTech or Loyalty Domain Familiarity: Prior exposure building self-service campaign dashboards, ad-tech delivery stacks, budgeting engines, or reward/coupon systems