Back End Engineer

We're on the lookout for a back-end engineer with experience and proficiency in NodeJS/TypeScript/Python and a strong DevOps mindset to join our team at Vizzuality. We expect our engineers not just to write code, but also to deploy, operate, and maintain the infrastructure it runs on. 

We're open to both mid-level and senior engineers, and we can offer a salary range of €30,000 - €49,000, depending on your experience. 

We are also open to exploring full-time and part-time contract options (with a minimum of 80% time dedication) depending on your needs.

Our vibrant team is spread across Spain, Portugal, and the UK. Currently, people work remotely or in our office in Madrid. You are welcome to join us if you are eligible to work in any of these three countries. 

Would you like to be part of Vizzuality's story?

Are you motivated by the desire to make a positive impact on the planet? Are you looking to put your skills to work on something truly meaningful? At Vizzuality, our purpose is to reach a fair and sustainable planet by creating tools that radically empower people to make positive changes now.

We are a world-leading technology, design, and science agency. We design and develop data-driven tools and applications for international organizations that focus on Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Inequality.

Solving such large and complex problems will bring you into contact with new technology and some of the world's most interesting organizations and academics in machine learning, remote sensing, and planetary data. You'll be working on projects like these:

https://www.globalforestwatch.org/

https://supplychains.trase.earth/

https://resourcewatch.org/

https://www.half-earthproject.org/maps/

https://www.landgriffon.com

Our Culture

Our aim is to help the world become a better place. Therefore, we need to make sure we care about our people and give them the power to build great things. These are some of the principles that define our culture:

• We Trust: Our team structure relies on self-organization. We want to work with colleagues who don't have to look 'up' for approval, nor look 'down' and give instructions. As soon as you step inside, we will equip you with all the tools to enable your success, and then we will trust you to do great things. 
• We Delight: We use our deep understanding of people's needs to spark delight. Our choices are based on science, research, and design principles. 
• We Care: For ourselves, our colleagues, and the organization. We know what we do is important, and we have a strong sense of responsibility for the work we do. 
• We Grow: As we are always embarking on new projects and challenges, a continuous learning mindset and a 'Can Do' attitude is a must. We are conscientious, and we focus on learning and achieving our goals. We give power to people so they can make decisions and plot their own paths with help from all around them.
• We have fun: We also know that you need to balance seriousness with fun. If you can make people smile, you will be off to a great start!

Want to know more about our culture? Check our Playbook. 

A day in the life of a Back-End Engineer at Vizzuality 

We're looking for an engineer who will work with a world-class, super-talented team of engineers, designers, scientists, and project managers. Someone passionate about using their creativity and technical skills to make a difference in people's lives, the environment, and the world.

DevOps as a Culture, Not a Team. At Vizzuality, we don't have a separate DevOps team. DevOps is part of how every engineer works. Our back-end engineers own the full lifecycle of their services: from writing code to deploying, monitoring, and operating it in production. You'll be expected to manage cloud infrastructure, write Infrastructure as Code, configure CI/CD pipelines, and troubleshoot production issues alongside your development work. If you thrive on owning what you ship end to end, you'll feel right at home.

• You will design and develop cross-functional, multi-platform application systems to ingest, process, analyze, and serve large amounts of data in the cloud, often in real-time, and ensure their craftsmanship, availability, resilience, and scalability.
• Working hands-on across our stack is one of the primary tasks engineers perform at Vizzuality. 
• Our core stacks are NodeJS/TypeScript (with NestJS/FastAPI (when developing in Python) as the main frameworks, depending on the project). You will work on different projects and experiment with new technologies. If you hit a snag or need to learn a new skill, our supportive team is always there to lend a hand and help you conquer any challenge.
• You will take the lead and meet with clients at different stages of the development process to help define requirements and propose solutions and alternatives.
• You will spend a significant amount of your time liaising with data scientists, front-end engineers, project managers, and designers to find novel and creative technical solutions that solve specific client/project needs and integrate disparate technologies such as remote sensing, machine learning, image processing or statistical computing into public APIs.
• You will also communicate with users, colleagues, leading scientists, and decision-makers to collect requirements, describe features and technical designs, and define product strategy.
• You will be responsible for infrastructure: building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and ensuring the platform is resilient, observable, and maintainable.
• Lastly, as an Engineer at Vizzuality, you will ensure software quality, robustness, and compliance with standards by reviewing code, documenting, and creating automated tests.

These are some of the things you will do and achieve in your first year at Vizzuality.

In your first month:

• You’ll pair with your peers on the backend team so you get used to the way things are done at Vizzuality.
• You’ll read documentation, write new features, and participate in team meetings (weekly, with the possibility of daily stand-ups on some projects). 
• You’ll get to know people from the other functional teams (science, design, front-end, business development) and development teams. 
• You'll join a more extended project at the end of your first month.

During the following months:

• You'll develop ownership of the project you've been assigned to. 
• You'll write features, documentation, tests, and fixes. You will join the back-end work within your project team and with support from the back-end functional group. 
• You'll also have opportunities to develop your skills in data-rich application engineering, cloud computing, and data processing. 
• Finally, you'll participate in defining the architectures and functional features for new project phases or projects.

By the end of the first year:

• You will have written several innovative features for ground-breaking projects with significant real-world impact (we mean this!).
• You'll take ownership of substantive features within larger backend projects.

Skills and experiences we are looking for in a candidate

(*) Even if you think you don't tick all the boxes below, we'd still love to hear from you. Nobody checks every box, and we are looking for someone excited to join the team and aligned with our purpose!

A. Behaviors and Mindset.

Anyone joining the team, regardless of their seniority level (mid or senior), should demonstrate the following:

• Global Perspective and Team Collaboration: You combine a global outlook with a strong commitment to teamwork. You understand how your work contributes to shared goals and you actively share knowledge, collaborate, and solve challenges with others.
• Commitment to 'Just Enough Complexity': You keep solutions simple, maintainable, and fit for purpose. You avoid over-engineering and focus on delivering direct, practical value.
• Agility with Resilience to Change: You thrive in fast-changing, iterative environments. You adapt your solutions as requirements evolve and see change as an opportunity to improve.
• Passion for Coding and Lifelong Learning: You show genuine enthusiasm for coding and continuously learn new tools and techniques. You treat challenges as opportunities to grow.
• Growth Mindset for T-Shaped Team Integration: You build deep expertise supported by broad, complementary skills. You collaborate effectively across disciplines and contribute beyond your core specialty when needed.
• Flexibility and Adaptability: You step outside your comfort zone when needed, learn new skills, and respond well to shifting priorities. You tackle challenges with creativity and resilience.
• Empathy and User Focus: You prioritize user needs and aim to create intuitive, user-friendly software.

B. Technical Skills.

Mid-level profiles - Technical Skills. 

• Proficiency in NodeJS/TypeScript/Python. 
• Code Readability and Documentation: Write clean, understandable code and maintain good documentation.
• Knowledge of relational and non-relational databases, including proficiency in SQL.
• Experience with the entire life cycle of a project, including production deployments.
• Experience working and designing with services and components within larger, modular architectures such as microservices systems.
• Docker or container technologies for development environments and production deployments.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred), including core services such as compute, storage, networking, and managed databases.
• Working knowledge of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or OpenTofu) for provisioning and managing cloud resources.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation.
• Experience with monitoring, logging, and observability tools in production environments.
• Docker or container technologies for both development and production deployments.
• Basic knowledge of Kubernetes and willingness to keep learning
• Knowledge of algorithms and data structures.
• Proficiency in writing automated tests.

Senior profiles - Technical Skills.

For more senior profiles, in addition to the above-described mid-level skills and experiences, we're expecting candidates to be able to show high levels of ownership and add value in all/some of the following areas with little supervision after the onboarding process:

• Technical Leadership and Mentorship: We are searching for candidates with a proven track record in technical leadership and a passion for mentorship, being a strategic thinker who can share knowledge, inspire innovation, and cultivate the skills of team members, driving collective success through shared expertise and visionary leadership.
• Solid experience and proficiency in NodeJS/TypeScript/Python.
• Solid experience with general server-side programming concepts and patterns and designing and building APIs.
• A high level of ownership and autonomy.

• Experience working and leading conversations with clients and other key stakeholders.
• Experience designing and maintaining cloud infrastructure for production workloads, including cost optimization and security best practices.
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/OpenTofu) to manage complex, multi-environment setups.
• Experience with Kubernetes or container orchestration platforms is highly desirable.
• Ability to define and improve CI/CD strategies, deployment workflows, and incident response processes.

Got something else that makes you stand out from the crowd? Over time, we'd like the person in this role to take on more responsibilities. If you have experience across some/all of the following areas (or would like to learn more about any of them), we would love to hear more about it: Python, Other programming languages, Cloud Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning), Geospatial Development, Data Engineering, and ETL (Extract, Transfer, Load). 

Compensation, Benefits & Growth

Our compensation and benefits are part of a great career opportunity with the potential for you to grow and work in an organization with a massive transformational purpose. So, if you care about the real-world impact of your work and are inspired by our mission to transform the world, here's what we have to offer!

Compensation:

• Annual salary between €30,000 - €49,000 (your final salary will be based on your experience and profile).
• Annual profit-sharing bonus plan (team bonus up to 10% of salary based on company performance).
• €1,000 Referral Bonus after six months of hiring (for every successful referral).

Growth:

• €1,500 annual training allowance for courses, conferences, volunteering, innovation projects, or meetups of your choice, including travel and lodging.
• Peer mentoring and support in designing your own career path.
• Support for personal projects and initiatives, such as giving talks, contributing to open source projects, and giving and receiving internal training.
• '4 Weeks Growth Sabbatical' when you reach 10 years at Vizz.

Wellbeing & Paid Time Off.

• 26 days of vacation (plus local bank holidays).
• Additional birthday holiday. :)
• Up to 2 extra vacation days when you make sustainable travel choices.
• Up to 3 extra vacation days after 5 years at Vizzuality, which will be added to your holiday allowance forever.

Care:

• Mental health support via Spill, our third-party provider, to connect you with qualified counselors and curated resources.
• Live in Spain? You'll have the option to enroll in our company-subsidized health and dental insurance plan.

Flexibility & Remote Work

• Remote work if you are based in Spain, Portugal, or the UK.
• Flexible schedules.
• We will provide you with everything you need to do great work (i.e., laptop, tools, and work-from-home equipment).
• 1 or 2 annual company-paid gatherings.

Recruitment Process Overview

Do you have what it takes to change the world? If, after reading the description of the role, you like our culture and believe you have what it takes to join Vizzuality, please send us your application. 

This is what the recruitment process looks like. Below are some suggestions for you to include and consider in your application.

Application: February 19th - March 8th

• Please send us your CV and Cover Letter explaining why you would like to work with us and what you can bring to the team. 
• Please include any samples of your work, portfolio, and projects you find relevant to the offer. 
• Fluent English is really important to us, so if it's not your first language, please demonstrate your abilities in your CV and Cover Letter. We will not consider applications that are not sent in English.

First Interview: March 2nd - 20th

• This is a 60-minute informal interview so you can get to know the company and our culture better and ask any questions about the role and our ways of working. 
• We want to understand what you are looking for, your current skill level and experience, and what you care about.

Challenge: March 16th - April 5th

• We will invite you to work on an assignment to get a better understanding of your skills, the way you organize your ideas, and also how you would go about sharing what you do.
• You will receive the assignment by email and be given a week to submit the completed task.

2nd Interview: April 6th onward

• You will meet with a few of us, and we will discuss your experience and skills in depth. You will also have the opportunity to discuss the details of the challenge you shared with us in the previous stage of the process. 
• This will be a great opportunity for you to ask us deeper questions about the role and the company.