Software Engineer (SDE 2)

THE CARWOW GROUP

Carwow Group is driven by a passion for getting people into cars. But not just any car, the right car. That’s why we are building the go-to destination for car-changing. Designed to reach drivers everywhere with our trail-blazing portfolio of personality rich automotive brands; Carwow, Auto Express, evo, Driving Electric and Car Buyer.

What started as a simple reviews site, is now one of the largest online car-changing destinations in Europe - over 10m customers have used Carwow to help them buy and sell cars since its inception. Last year we grew over 50% with nearly £3bn worth of cars bought on site, while £1.8bn of cars were listed for sale through our Sell My Car service.

In 2024 we went big and acquired Autovia, doubling our audience overnight. Together we now have one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world with over 1.1 billion annual views, sell 1.2 million print copies of our magazines and have an annual web content reach over 350 million.

WHY JOIN US?

We are winners of the prestigious Culture 100 award that recognises the most loved and happiest tech companies to work for! We have just raised $52m in funding led by global venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners (an early backer of LinkedIn and Shopify) to accelerate our growth plans!

As pioneers, we’re always driving for new territory and positive change, so our work as a group is never done. Where others see difficulty, it’s our responsibility to see possibility – building new experiences, launching new titles and listening to drivers.

Being a part of Carwow Group means championing drivers and the automotive industry, acting as a disrupter and never being afraid to fail (but learning fast when we do!).

Our team of 500 employees across the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal are revolutionising car-changing and we are fast expanding our mission across every single brand and country we operate in, so jump in!

ABOUT THE TEAM

As a team our mission is to create a technology driven company where we are empowered to use our skills to solve difficult problems and scale the product.

To achieve this, we are looking to hire software developers that are passionate about developing simple solutions for complex problems. Successful candidates will work with our team in a full-stack position.

Our tech stack is primarily Ruby on Rails using PostgreSQL, all hosted on Heroku. We use Terraform to manage our infrastructure and encourage teams to be involved in how we deploy and run our code in Production.

You'll be supported by one of our Engineering Managers who are there to help you with your career progression and ensure that the team you are on are working as well as they can - continuously improving!

We have a career progression framework that means you know what is expected of you and how you can progress through our career ladder and your EM will work with you to make sure you are happy, fulfilled, and doing the best work you can be doing.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Software engineers at carwow work on cross-functional product teams of product managers, engineers, designers and data analysts. You will work closely with a Product Manager and a Tech Lead on deciding what features to build for customers, break down and build features with the team, review code, mentor engineers, ensure operational excellence, and share knowledge broadly across the engineering organisation.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• We love solving real-world problems!

• We work quickly, releasing code into production multiple times daily. You’ll see your code go live continuously.

• You’d be part of a growing team building a platform that will help define the future of car buying.

• We’re a curious bunch driven by a common goal of "How can we make it better?

• We work hard to ensure our people have the right level of autonomy, support and sense of purpose to really flourish in their careers.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

Please note: We know that no candidate will be the perfect match for all we've listed in this posting, so we’d encourage you to apply if you feel you're close to the brief but not an exact match.

Time spent in software engineering roles is of course important, but we prioritise attitude, aptitude, and the kind of impact you’ve had over years' experience. Ideally you’ll have:

• Have a good grasp of Ruby, both plain and with frameworks (e.g. Ruby on Rails)

• Enjoy working within a TDD environment

• Like the idea of working on events based systems, for example Kafka

• Are comfortable using git or other source control system proficiently

• Have worked in a metrics-driven team and care about the outcomes of your work.

• Are self-driven and take responsibility for product outcomes, doing whatever’s necessary to make things happen,

You’re not expected to be an expert in all of these technologies and tools, we are happy to support your learning journey. If you’re unsure about any of the above, please apply.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU

• Fully remote working role, with offices in London, Munich, Madrid, and Porto that you can work from

• 4-5 trips to the London office for social and team bonding events

• Competitive salary to fund that dream holiday to Bali

• Matched pension contributions for a peaceful retirement

• Share options - when we thrive, so do you!

• Vitality Private Healthcare, for peace of mind, plus eyecare vouchers

• Life Assurance for (even more) peace of mind

• Monthly coaching sessions with Spill - our mental wellbeing partner

• Enhanced holiday package, plus Bank Holidays

  • 28 days annual leave

  • 1 day for your wedding

  • 1 day off when you move house - because moving is hard enough without work!

  • For your third year anniversary, get 30 days of annual leave per year

Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We know that diverse teams are strong teams, so we welcome those with alternative identities, backgrounds, and experiences to apply for this position. We make recruiting decisions based on experience, skills and potential, so all our applicants are treated fairly and equally.