Senior Backend Engineer (London)

Mission

We are an engineering-led technology scale-up applying complex computer science techniques to change the way risk is determined within insurance, through our SaaS platform, Renew.

Renew has been carefully engineered to let users build and deploy mathematical models that can then harness complex data sets to drive better decision making in insurance.

To use a real-world example of how this has been applied - one client used Renew to price insurance for a Space X launch, wrangling all manner of weird and wonderful data to predict the risk/likelihood of every possible outcome, from arrival at the launchpad to breaking through each layer of earth's atmosphere, to a safe return home, and every potential obstacle along the way - including space debris!

After only four years we have a client-base ranging from niche specialty insurers up to some of the largest enterprise insurers globally - each with thousands of users. We achieved profitability after just three years, but given the opportunity we have to further disrupt the market and establish ourselves as the go-to modelling software/platform that can be used far beyond just insurance, we raised a Series A fundraise with Highland Europe in early 2021 to help us scale from 40 to 100 and achieve this goal!

Product Engineering at hx

Our engineering department is a melting pot of some of the brightest (and kindest!) engineers in the industry.

The level of complexity of Renew requires a highly technical, true engineering mindset so an output of this is a deeply creative, innovative environment where we push technological boundaries, both through our work and our regular (and sometimes irregular!) hackathons.

What will you do?

2023 is going to be a big year for hx. Our profile is growing rapidly, and our customer base with it. We have tonnes of exciting features to develop, and we want to deliver more of them in parallel, sooner, safer, than we've ever done before. To make sure we're set for the future we're going to be looking at all our systems, refreshing most of them and reworking the rest to get us ready for anything. It's a deeply exciting prospect for us, and you could be part of it!

As a Senior Backend Engineer you will:

• Help us build the right thing by working with product managers, designers, fellow engineers and customers to understand problems and develop solutions
• Help us build the thing right by writing high quality, thoughtful, simple, commented, documented, tested, well-structured code aligned to our constants, principles and standards
• Drive our technical standards, decisions, and strategy
• Guide, mentor and advise other members of the team
• Continually learn and improve yourself. Experiment and play with new technologies through your work, extracurriculars and hackathons
• Help reduce friction and eliminate impediments that slow us down
• Promote hx in the community by contributing to open source projects, writing on our blog and/or presenting at virtual meetups/conferences

Initial Deliverables:

• Within your first month:
  • You will work your way (with plenty of help) through the first stages of our incredibly thorough on-boarding process
  • You’re going to be working with some amazing people, both within Product Engineering and the rest of hx - so meeting and getting to know your fellow hxers is high on your list
  • We’re always improving how we do things, not least our development process, so getting up to speed with this will help you kick start
  • Take off - have your first changes committed and deployed to at least our development environment
• Within your first two months, you will have:
  • Been involved in ideating solutions for upcoming work - we get engineers involved in the process as soon as possible
  • Written your first blog post - we’re pretty sure that almost every day you’ll solve something in a way that others will find interesting - and we share that
  • Worked with your manager to lay our your personal development plan for the next twelve months. Developing you as a person is very important to hx (and we need to make sure you have a plan to use the amazing training budget you’ll get!)
• Within three months you will have:
  • With your team, delivered on a substantial piece of work - engineers at hx are responsible for how things are designed and implemented - you’ll work through this process from end to end, with your team.
  • Enrolled in a course at hx University - building on how important your growth is to us, we want you to make use all the resources available to you, and hx University is a great place to start
  • Delivered your first "Brown bag" lesson - share what you know - if you have knowledge to share that you think will be of interest to others then presenting a brown bag session is one of the best ways of sharing it

Who we are looking for?

Experience and skills

hx is far less interested in counting years over evidence of delivery, and our requirements reflect this.

• Have experience using at least one of Rust, Kotlin, Golang, Python
• Built (and possibly operated) cloud applications (at scale is a plus).
• Have a demonstrably good working knowledge of fundamental computer science and software engineering principles (algorithms, data structures, complexity, design patterns, architecture).
• Have experience of a complete product development lifecycle (conception through to delivery).
• Value our values (excellence, initiative, passion, kindness, thoughtfulness) as much as we do.
• Love science, technology, engineering and/or mathematics.

Persona

You will be a fit for this role if you can show clear evidence that you:

• Are that fantastic blend of curious, smart and kind
• Are always working to improve how you do things
• Are a technologist at heart and will never stop learning new things.
• Care about technical quality and about the people in your team
• Are value (customer) obsessed

What do we offer?

• Competitive salary + very staff-friendly EMI share options
• £5,000 for individual and group training and conference budget
• 25 days’ holiday plus 8 bank holiday days (33 in total)
• Company pension scheme via Penfold
• Mental health and therapy provision via ⁠Spectrum.life
• Individual wellbeing allowance via Juno
• Private healthcare insurance through AXA
• Top-spec equipment (laptop, screens, mechanical keyboards, etc)
• Regular remote hackathons, lunch & learns, socials and games nights
• Team breakfasts and lunches, snacks, drinks fridge, fun office @ The Ministry
• Huge opportunity for personal development and mastery as we grow together!

What’s next?

• Initial call with our Talent team to kick things off
• Introductory call with the Head of Engineering
• Practical skills assessment
• Meet the VP of Engineering
• hx Values
• We offer!

Diversity @ hx

We are committed to diversity and equal opportunity. We’re a smart and kind team who believes that the more inclusive we are, the better our work and culture is. We are not yet where we want to be in terms of balance, but it is our mission to build a team that represents a variety of backgrounds and perspectives and we are working hard towards that goal.

If you like the sound of this role but you’re not totally sure whether you’re the right fit – please apply anyway and we’ll let you know either way. Remember: you miss every shot you don’t take!