Junior Backend Engineer

At Catawiki, every day brings the extraordinary! Whether it’s , a , or , we encounter exceptional objects every day.

We're a one-of-a-kind marketplace for buying and selling special objects! Each week we offer over 75,000 unique items in auction, carefully curated by our passionate in-house experts.

Having sold over 20 million unique objects to date, we’re on a mission to become the world’s most popular destination for special objects. As a growing, diverse and sustainable scale-up, we proudly live by our core values:

• Taking ownership and driving impact
• Being open to change and feedback
• Being passionate about our mission and our customers.

If these values resonate with you, we’d love to explore how you can join us on this exciting journey!

About the Job

On our path to becoming the most visited online curated marketplace for special objects, our Engineering team is on a mission to deliver the best experience across our platforms by building best-in-class products for search & discovery, bidding, curation, logistics, payments, and support.

We're a scale-up with customer-facing challenges dealing with high-scale (75k auctions per week) and high traffic (more than 10 million visitors per month). As a Junior Software Engineer, you’ll support one of our 3 verticals - Demand, Supply, or Fulfilment - improving and delivering product innovations for our platform.

Working in small, fully autonomous, and highly collaborative Agile teams, you will build scalable, maintainable, and resilient microservices and features. That's why we are looking for bold, curious and open developers! Are you ready to join?

Where you'll be

Our office is located in Amsterdam. We don't sponsor relocation or visas for this role in detail - Please only apply if you have the right to work in the Netherlands.

What you will do

• Build: Design, develop, test, deploy, maintain and improve. You’ll be part of a team that is end-to-end responsible for their own microservices.
• Collaborate: Work closely with product designers, product owners, front, back, and mobile engineers to share new ideas and make our processes even more efficient.
• Growth: Support our great engineering culture, by documenting and advocating for best development practices - constantly improving the quality of our products by fixing bugs and refactoring the code base where necessary.
• Learn: Boost your career by testing new technologies and participating in our Technical Week (after 2 product sprints): a week dedicated to promoting creativity, innovation, and knowledge sharing across domains.

What you’ll bring

We look for engineers motivated to learn new things, ship new features, and pursue new and interesting challenges. Our backend stack focuses on Ruby (not too different from Python), and the frontend is mainly built using TypeScript and React. However, if you’re passionate about learning new things, prior experience with Ruby is unnecessary.

As a Junior Engineer, you have a lot of growth and opportunities ahead of you. At Catawiki, we will give you much room to explore your interests and strengths and provide you with the support you need to grow rapidly and become a true back-end professional.

A strong candidate has:

• At least 1 year of experience in your first full-time job
• A completed Master's degree
• Some experience collaborating with others in a professional or academic setting, whether with other engineers and product managers in a software development environment, or similar interactions in another organization, making you a valued member of an autonomous, cross-functional team.
• You have experience with at least one mainstream programming language (including, without limitation, Ruby, Python, Go, C++, C#, Java, Scala, Kotlin, etc.) and the willingness to learn other programming languages as necessary (we use Ruby).
• You have some fundamental knowledge of SQL and relational databases.
• Nice to have: You are familiar with Application Programming Interfaces, whether the API is a web technology such as HTTP, REST, JSON, etc., or another API technology such as gRPC.

Additionally:

• You are a passionate engineer with a strong eye for detail.
• You strive to be a great team player and don’t shy away from new challenges.
• You are someone who takes initiative and is ready to jump in and help if needed.
• You keep the company's values close to your heart.
• You enjoy working in a diverse and dynamic environment..
• You possess a "growth mindset" in which you take the initiative to further your personal skill set as a software developer, whether by learning new skills and/or technologies or by seeking new opportunities

Why You'll Love Working with Us

• Create a Visible Impact by working at scale in a global organisation that serves millions of customers across 80+ categories. In our flat structure, every role has a broad scope that directly impacts both our customers and the business.
• Learn and Grow with Us through our Learning & Development initiatives, which include clear development plans and mentorship programmes designed to support your career progression.
• A Culture of Connection defines us. We’re a passionate, diverse and collaborative team of 800+ Catawikains and 60+ nationalities, all coming together to build a one-of-a-kind marketplace. We foster an inclusive and queer-friendly work environment, committed to making every Catawikian feel welcomed and empowered. Whatever your story, we encourage you to bring your unique perspective to our team.
• Celebrate Life’s Moments with us at Catawiki. When you join us, you’ll receive a €100 Catavoucher, and on each birthday, you'll get a €50 Catavoucher to celebrate. Enjoy an extra day off each year to "Pursue Your Passion". We also recognise significant work anniversaries (3, 5, 8, 10 years) with additional time off, plus extra leave for life’s big moments like marriage, engagements, or moving house.

Please note that benefits can vary by location. For specific information regarding what’s available in your country, please consult your recruiter.

Our Offices and Way of Working

Our vibrant offices in Amsterdam, Paris and Lisbon are designed to inspire and connect. Most Catawikians are within commuting distance of one of our offices and enjoy the flexibility of a hybrid work model. This means we typically ask you to be in the office 2 out of 5 days, roughly 40% of your working time, to collaborate and connect with your colleagues. Of course, if the job description specifies that the role is 100% remote—such as for certain expert or sales positions—then that arrangement will apply.

Interested?

Apply directly with an English CV and cover letter by submitting your information at the bottom of this page. By submitting your application you agree to .

If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.