Senior Software Engineer | Backend

Meet DeepL DeepL is a global AI product and research company focused on building secure, intelligent solutions to complex business problems. Over 200,000 business customers and millions of individuals across 228 global markets today trust DeepL's Language AI platform for human‑like translation, improved writing and real‑time voice translation. Building on a history of innovation, quality and security, DeepL continues to expand its offerings beyond the field of Language, including DeepL Agent – an autonomous AI assistant designed to transform the way businesses and knowledge workers get work done.

Founded in 2017 by CEO Jarek Kutylowski, DeepL now has over 1,000 passionate employees and is supported by world‑renowned investors including Benchmark, IVP, and Index Ventures.

What sets us apart is our blend of cutting‑edge AI technology, meaningful work, and a culture where people truly thrive. We’re a team of innovators, researchers, and creators driven by a shared purpose to unlock human potential by making work simpler, smarter, and more connected. When we share what it’s like to work at DeepL, the reactions are overwhelmingly positive. This might be because of our technology that helps millions of people and businesses communicate and work better every day, or because of the trust, curiosity, and care that shape our culture.

What we know for sure is this: being part of DeepL means joining a team dedicated to innovation, growth, and well‑being.

DeepL is not just a translation tool; we are building the Operating System for Global Communication
. We are the rare AI company that builds the entire stack in-house: from training next‑gen LLMs on our own NVIDIA DGX Super

PODs to delivering real‑time Language AI to over 100 million users and 100,000+ businesses globally.

We are shifting gears. We are moving from "Software‑First" to "Product‑First." We don’t hire backend engineers just to build APIs or optimise database queries in isolation. We hire Missionaries
—builders who obsess over system reliability, massive scale, and the business impact of their architectural choices.

• Architect for Ambiguity & Scale:
  Design distributed systems that can handle 10x growth. Make high‑stakes technical decisions—choosing between eventual consistency vs. strong consistency, or monolith vs. microservices—often with incomplete information, and own the consequences.
• Own Revenue‑Critical Systems:
  Take full ownership of mission‑critical services (e.g., Subscription Management, Identity, or API Gateways). Define the failure modes, the monitoring strategy, and the path to production.
• Bridge the Technical & Business Gap:
  Translate complex backend constraints into business terms for Product Managers, ensuring we negotiate the right trade‑offs to ship value fast.
• Drive Technical Pragmatism:
  Prioritise maintainability and simplicity. Write code that the team can read and debug at 2 AM, two years from now.

• A "Distributed Systems" Mindset:
  Understand the fallacies of distributed computing. Design for failure, manage concurrency, and handle data consistency at scale.
• High Agency & Bias for Action:
  Don’t wait for permission or perfect specs. Profile performance bottlenecks, propose refactors, and unblock yourself and the team.
• Data Modeling Mastery:
  Have strong opinions on data. Understand the trade‑offs between SQL and No
  
  SQL and model complex domain logic while preventing data corruption in a high‑volume environment.
• Product‑Oriented Engineering:
  Care about why we are building this. Optimize for user value, willing to take pragmatic shortcuts to validate product hypotheses.
• AI‑Native Velocity:
  Leverage AI‑powered tools (like Git Hub Copilot or Claude) to accelerate velocity, eliminate repetitive toil, and focus on high‑value architectural decisions and complex problem solving.

A Note on Our Hiring Process:
DeepL hires for the company, not just a specific team. We operate a Unified Engineering Pipeline. If you pass our bar, we will match you to the highest‑priority role that fits your skillset—whether that is in Core Product, Platform, Voice, or…