The Mission 🏡

At Wayhome we are reinventing homeownership by co-investing with people who haven't been able to buy a home yet. We’re a team of operations specialists, data scientists, engineers and creatives, who are addressing one of the biggest and most life-changing problems our customers have: how they can get the security and freedom of homeownership for their families and for themselves.

The Company & Team 🚀

We foster a collaborative and supportive environment where everyone’s contributions are valued. You will be supported by your colleagues when you need it, and be left to get on with it when you don't. The company is focused on finding more customers left behind by the housing market and developing the business to make us more efficient and productive as we scale.

Our Backend Engineers work mostly in Python, and our Frontend Engineers in React and Typescript. We have developed a bespoke platform for matching aspiring homeowners with homes that are right for them and for our investors, as well as internal tooling to support our property and customer due diligence processes.

We assess customer financial risk by processing and analysing data from credit and affordability providers. For our customers currently living in Wayhomes, we also work with a payments platform to collect recurring rental payments via Direct Debit (DD) and ad hoc payments via Faster Payments and direct bank transfers.

Job requirements

The Role ✨

The Backend Developer role will report to the Lead Engineer. We are looking for an individual who is passionate and motivated to learn and hone their craft as a developer with the support of an experienced Lead Engineer, training you closely.

We are open to seeing various profiles for this position, whether you are looking for a full-time position, returning back to work, looking for a role that is contracted or just requires a bit of flexibility in your working pattern. We pride ourselves on creating a flexible and supportive working environment and are willing to explore various working options.

What you’ll work on🌱

TLDR: We are looking for a Backend Developer to join our team, helping to build and scale our systems while ensuring reliability, security, and efficiency. You’ll work on delivering non-trivial features, maintaining infrastructure, all while collaborating with a talented and supportive team.

Developing and maintaining our backend services, including APIs, batch jobs and event-based workers.
Writing reusable libraries, such as clients for third-party APIs.
TDD/Pair programming
Deploying and running applications in containerised environments. Something about CI/CD here.
Designing and optimising persistent data solutions, including database schema design and indexing.

Tech stack 📊

Python, FastAPI, Pytest
PostgreSQL
Google Cloud
Kubernetes
Github Actions

Who you are 🧐

REST API Development – Hands-on experience in designing, building, and maintaining RESTful APIs, ensuring scalability and performance.
Data Management – Knowledge of persistent data solutions, including relational databases, and best practices for data storage and retrieval.
Growth mindset – A strong desire to continuously learn, improve, and drive personal growth as a backend developer, embracing challenges and seeking opportunities to expand technical expertise.
Product mindset - A deep understanding of the product development lifecycle, user experience, and design thinking. A passion for creating user-centric products.
Communication skills - You are able to communicate fluently in English and have excellent interpersonal skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
Problem-solving - Exceptional problem-solving and critical-thinking abilities.
Adaptability - Comfortable with uncertainty, able to adapt quickly to change and pivot.
Someone who can talk honestly about the things they’ve achieved, the mistakes they’ve made, and the learnings they’ve gained along the way! You can read more about Wayhome’s values here

Apply with Confidence: Why You Don’t Need to Meet Every Requirement 📝

We think it’s important to make it clear that if you’re reading the above requirements and worrying that you don't have experience with one, some, or any of the items on the list, please still apply! We think they’re trainable and are not required for a successful applicant to come in and change our world.

️ A lot of research shows that men apply to jobs when they feel they hit around 60% of the criteria... but women and marginalised groups tend to only apply if they hit every single ask. Our job ads are a guide, but we won't be looking for a 100% match on paper! We're interested in hearing about how you can contribute to our team, not just tick the boxes.

What does success look like? 🚀

In your first month:

Getting up to speed with our systems, tools, and development workflows.
Collaborating with the team to understand our architecture and how everything fits together.
Picking up your first tickets and making meaningful contributions to our codebase.
Gaining confidence in debugging and troubleshooting issues with support from the team.

In your first three months:

Delivering enhancements that improve our customer experience and internal tools.
Becoming comfortable with our infrastructure, APIs, and database management.
Contributing to project discussions and sharing ideas to improve how we work.
Writing well-structured, maintainable code with a focus on performance and security.

In your first year:

Taking ownership of key features and seeing them through from development to production.
Deepening your expertise in backend development, cloud infrastructure, and observability.
Collaborating with engineers, product managers, and other teams to shape technical decisions.
Proactively identifying areas for improvement and suggesting ways to optimize performance and scalability.

Other things we’ll do together:

The relentless pursuit of prioritisation - as our team expands, we'll always strive to allocate resources where they'll make the biggest impact
An unwavering commitment to inquisitiveness, as we seek innovative approaches to elevate our business
An exploration of your own aspirations and growth objectives, with our unwavering support to help you achieve them! 🎉

Hiring Process 🌱

30 minute initial video call to surface alignment with the HR Manager
A more in depth competency interview with the Lead Engineer
A pair programming exercise with our Lead Engineers - The exercise is not designed so much to test your coding ability, but your approach to problem solving, pairing and TDD.
Meet some other Wayhome employees

🗣️ We know interview processes are two-way, so you’ll have plenty of time to grill us at each stage and we’ll always be completely honest about the realities of working at Wayhome.

We offer 👏🏻

Salary £40,000-60,000 based on experience
Unlimited holiday
A learning budget
OpenUp. mental health support platform
Work from anywhere (within our guidelines)
Monthly health, wealth and development allowance via Happl.
An opportunity to be granted stock options
Cycle to work scheme
Flu Jabs & Eye Care
Workplace Nursery Scheme
Discounted legal services
Enhanced Parental Leave

Flexible working ✨

We are a remote first business, with no specific obligations to come into the office except for our quarterly All Hands & Social as well as occasional team collaboration days. We have a (dog friendly) office in central London if you're unable or don’t want to work from home, or just prefer the buzz of a co-working space. We want to support making your working experience as as enjoyable and productive as possible; so if there is a specific way you want to work or you have particular requirements, let us know: we're always open to discussing it.

Applicants must have the right to work in the UK as we are currently unable to offer sponsorship. If you have concerns or questions about this part of the process, please feel free to reach out to us at people@wayhome.co.uk.

Backend Developer