Senior Backend Engineer – Audiobooks

Spotify

Senior Backend Engineer creating scalable systems for audiobook ingestion and delivery. Join a high-impact team enhancing long-form storytelling at Spotify.

Posted 5/20/2026full-timeLondon • 🇬🇧 United KingdomSeniorWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Google Cloud PlatformGRPCJavaSwitching

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design and build systems that power audiobook ingestion, transformation, and delivery — ensuring performance, accuracy, and scalability across millions of titles.
Contribute across the stack, from backend services and APIs to lightweight interfaces or operational tools, depending on the team’s evolving needs.
Collaborate with engineers, PMs, and designers to translate sophisticated workflows into elegant, maintainable, and reliable systems.
Be responsible for your impact — take operational responsibility for the services you build and drive continuous improvement in reliability and performance.
Adapt and T-shape: Step into areas beyond your comfort zone (e.g., data pipelines, internal tooling, or deployment infrastructure) as the mission evolves.
Author and review RFCs, sharing your insights and shaping technical decisions that affect the broader Audiobooks ecosystem.
Embrace the Audiobooks Mission expectations: operate with “short toes,” take ownership beyond team boundaries, and value pragmatic, reversible decisions.
Mentor and collaborate with peers, sharing knowledge and contributing to an inclusive, psychologically safe engineering culture.

Requirements

What you’ll need

You have 5+ years of software engineering experience, ideally across backend systems and distributed architectures.
You’re highly proficient in Spotify's backend tech stack (Java/gRPC/GCP).
You have some data experience and a willingness to work across the stack when needed — not because you have to, but because you’re curious.
You care about clean, maintainable, and testable code and take ownership of quality and operational excellence.
You thrive in ambiguous, fast paced environments, enjoy context-switching, and value quick, pragmatic decision-making.
You demonstrate data proficiency, curiosity about the business domain, and a desire to understand the broader audiobook ecosystem.
You’re collaborative, humble, and growth-minded — adopting Spotify’s playful culture and Audiobooks Mission ethos of experimentation, ownership, and continuous learning.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Health insurance
Flexible work arrangements

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

software engineeringbackend systemsdistributed architecturesJavagRPCGCPdata pipelinesclean codemaintainable codetestable code

Soft Skills

collaborationownershipcuriosityadaptabilitymentorshippsychological safetygrowth mindsetdecision-makingcontext-switchingoperational responsibility