TrustedHousesitters is a fast growing, direct-to-consumer marketplace that redefines pet care and travel. Our platform connects a global community of pet lovers through a trust-based membership model. We’re on a mission to create a world where pet owners can travel with peace of mind, knowing their pets are in safe hands, while sitters enjoy unique homestays around the world.

Our vision is to become the world’s most loved travel solution for pet people. With almost 250,000 members worldwide and a goal of scaling to 1 million, 97% say we have improved their lives. We’re growing rapidly through word-of-mouth and community passion. TrustedHousesitters was named one of Escape the City’s top organisations to work for in 2023, joined Technation’s Future Fifty in 2024, and achieved B Corp certification in October 2024, reflecting our commitment to our people, the planet and pets globally.

At TrustedHousesitters, we foster a collaborative, high-impact work environment where innovation, accountability and ownership drive everything we do. We empower our people to see the real impact of their work, with every team member contributing to quality experiences for our members as we continuously improve, iterate, and innovate to strengthen our global pet-loving community.

Now is an exciting time to join TrustedHousesitters, where innovation, advocacy and community-driven growth lie at the heart of our success. If you’re looking to make a real impact in a mission-led, fast-scaling tech business, this is the right place for you.

About The Role

We are seeking a motivated Senior Backend Engineer to join our Health Alliance team, which plays a critical role in the monetisation strategy and scaling TrustedHousesitters from 250K to 1 million members. This role focuses on building fast and scalable capabilities using our Python/Django back-end with SQL DB. The ideal candidate will be comfortable with APIs and passionate about performance and best practices.

As part of the Health Alliance, you’ll thrive in a collaborative, experimentation-driven environment where iteration, autonomy, and impact are core values. Your work will directly impact our members (pet owners and sitters) by delivering exceptional capabilities that enhance the value they get from the platform.

Responsibilities

• Driving the design, development and innovation of new and existing capabilities that deliver value to our members, enhancing their experience and increasing lifetime value.
• Improving our platform’s architecture and developer experience by contributing to our Python/Django codebase, enabling faster delivery and scalable code.
• Writing clean, well-tested code and performing high-quality, constructive code reviews.
• Influencing technical discussions and architecture decisions to shape the platform’s future.
• Troubleshooting complex issues in production and ensuring ongoing application performance and reliability.
• Mentoring others and raising the standard of engineering practices within the team.
• Collaborating with Product and Design to shape initiatives that impact key KPIs while aligning technical tradeoffs with business priorities.

Requirements

• Proven experience (4+ years) in back-end development, including production-grade Python/Django or equivalent frameworks.
• Strong understanding of scalable back-end architecture, performance optimisation, and best coding practices.
• Experience designing, building, and evolving APIs and integrating with third-party platforms.
• Ability to lead technical discovery, architecture planning, and implementation of complex product features.
• Great communication skills and confidence in collaborating cross-functionally with other Engineers, Product Managers, Designers, QA, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfortable driving initiatives in ambiguous problem spaces, aligning business and technical perspectives.
• Experience within the payment domain and with integrating payment processors (e.g. Stripe).
• Experience mentoring engineers through pairing, code reviews, and knowledge-sharing.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing strategies, and observability tools (e.g., GitHub Actions, Sentry, Datadog).
• A mindset geared toward experimentation, measurement, and continuous improvement, especially within product teams.

Nice To Haves

• Previous experience working in a start-up/scale-up environment.
• Familiar with Agile methodologies and working with Scrum/Kanban.
• Experience integrating AI/ML-powered tools or APIs (e.g., GPT, image recognition, personalization engines) to enhance user experience or automate tasks.
• Experience leveraging AI to enhance your own productivity.
• Familiarity with A/B testing frameworks or data-informed experimentation.

Benefits

• Fully remote work
• Generous equity options
• Discretionary 10% annual bonus
• 25 days holiday annually plus bank holidays and Christmas to New Year closure
• Pension scheme: 5% employee, 3% company
• Premium TrustedHousesitters pet owner and sitter membership with related benefits
• Additional team perks and allowances including travel, home office, spaces access, and personal development resources
• Health insurance and dental plans
• Trusted Giving and volunteer opportunities
• Weekly virtual yoga sessions and other wellness initiatives

If you’re ready to join us on our mission to become the most loved pet travel solution, we’d love to hear from you!

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (for example: she/her, he/him, they/them).

We are committed to equal opportunity in all aspects of recruitment and employment. Offers of employment are based on individual merit, qualifications, and professional suitability. Protected characteristics do not influence our decisions.