Principal Backend Engineer

Join us as Principal Backend Engineer in the Foundations domain and help scale the critical systems that power Qonto's 600,000+ customers — before they become bottlenecks. You'll drive company-wide backend initiatives spanning transactions, search, monetization, permissions, and integrations.

➡️ What you'll do

• Anticipate and solve scale challenges before they hit: You'll map technical risks across Foundations' core systems — ~600k daily transactions approaching 1B total, search indexing, billing — and drive the architectural work that keeps Qonto's growth ahead of its infrastructure.
• Lead broad, high-stakes technical initiatives: You'll own end-to-end programs spanning multiple teams, touching Legal, Risk, Compliance, and leadership, with real business consequences.
• Shape the platform's future: You'll identify where Foundations needs to invest next — from granular permissions to AI-native integrations — and translate those bets into technical roadmaps.
• Multiply the engineering org around you: You'll raise the bar for groups of engineers through mentoring, coaching programs, and technical enablement — not just one-on-ones.
• Bridge business goals and backend decisions: You'll connect company and customer needs to concrete technical plans and communicate them clearly to engineers and executives alike.

➡️ What we're looking for

• Large-scale backend architecture: You've designed and scaled high-volume systems — transactions, search/indexing, billing, or similar — under real growth pressure.
• Company-wide technical leadership: You've driven complex, multi-team initiatives that touched Legal, Risk, Compliance, and leadership, and you can tie every technical decision to a business outcome.
• Autonomous by default: You thrive in ambiguous environments, map ecosystems yourself, surface risks early, and propose initiatives without waiting for direction.
• Multiplier, not just contributor: You've raised the bar for groups of engineers through mentoring programs, documentation, or structured technical enablement.
• AI in your workflow: You use AI tools to accelerate how you architect, prototype, and communicate — and you're excited about what AI-native integrations could unlock for a platform like ours.

➡️ What we can offer you

• Scale Qonto's next chapter: Usage and data volumes are growing fast — you'll architect solutions before systems become bottlenecks, not after.
• The largest engineering domain at Qonto: Foundations spans ~110 backend engineers across internal tooling, monetization, integrations, transactions, permissions, and automation — it's genuinely Principal-scale scope.
• Complex, urgent, business-critical challenges: From search indexing trade-offs at 1B+ interactions to AI-native integrations, the technical problems here directly shape the product millions of customers use daily.
• Real ownership over technical direction: You'll identify what matters, propose the roadmap, and drive execution — with the autonomy to shape the domain's future.

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Don't check every box? If you're excited by the scope and feel strongly about the mission, we'd love to hear from you anyway.