At parcelLab, we’re reshaping how the world’s leading brands manage the post-purchase experience.

Our post-purchase platform helps companies like John Lewis, Chico's, Yeti, AllSaints, and others transform every touchpoint into moments that drive customer engagement, build loyalty, and create customers for life.

We’re looking for a Senior Backend Engineer — a product‑focused builder with strong agency — to help evolve our Returns Portal, a white‑label SaaS used by customers in 175+ countries. You’ll work on a large‑scale Django application with a modern Python toolchain (uv/mypy/Ruff/Pydantic) and a server‑driven UI stack (HTMX/Alpine).

The role:

You will design and evolve the backend systems behind our returns experiences—owning problems end‑to‑end: clarify outcomes, collaborate with Product and Design, and ship reliable, observable services that make returns fast, clear, and correct.

What you’ll do:

• Lead services & workflows from concept to impact: model data, implement APIs and jobs, instrument, launch, and iterate.

• Design and evolve domain models & rules for returns (RMAs, eligibility, routing, bundles) with safe migrations and clear boundaries.

• Build and maintain APIs (REST/GraphQL) and endpoints that power our server‑driven UI (HTMX/Alpine).

• Integrate with commerce systems (e.g., Shopify) and order/warehouse tools: design and operate API/webhook integrations, keep orders and RMAs in sync, and ensure idempotent, reliable synchronization and backfills.

• Raise the bar on engineering practices: typing (mypy), validation (Pydantic), code quality (Ruff), CI/CD, and thoughtful reviews.

• Own quality in production: monitor performance and error rates; fix what you ship.

What we’re looking for:

• Proficiency with Python in production, ideally (nice to have) with Django.

• Strong SQL fundamentals, relational modeling, and safe migrations.

• Experience building APIs (REST) and working with job queues.

• Comfort with modern Python tooling: uv, mypy, Ruff, Pydantic.

• Testing mindset (unit/integration) and continuous delivery know‑how.

• Evidence of agency: stories where you drove an outcome end‑to‑end.

Bonus Points:

• Experience with server‑driven UIs (Django templates + HTMX/Alpine).

• Tailwind CSS and solid CSS fundamentals (layout, responsive, a11y) for pragmatic UI tweaks in server‑rendered templates.

• Shopify ecosystem exposure (Admin API, webhooks, embedded apps).

• E‑commerce/returns domain familiarity (bundles, routing, warehousing).

• Observability and SLO practice (metrics, tracing, error budgets); performance tuning in Django at scale.

Our stack:

(you don’t need all of this)

Python 3.14, Django, HTMX/Alpine.js (server‑driven UI), mypy, Ruff, Pydantic, uv; PostgreSQL (relational), Redis, a job queue (Celery), REST API / GraphQL, AWS, Terraform, GitHub Actions, feature flags, Sentry/Datadog observability.

Why join parcelLab:

• You’ll join a passionate and collaborative global team with plenty of room to grow

• Competitive salary + benefits

• A culture that values creativity, experimentation, and ownership

Perks & Benefits:

🧠 Plenty of room for your own ideas...space to try, fail and learn!

🛳 Comprehensive 30-60-90 day onboarding plan in place from the very first day to help you integrate seamlessly with the rest of the company and understand new responsibilities

🏝 As a digital-first company, you choose whether to work entirely from home, in one of our offices or a mix that suits you. Not close to one of our offices? No problem! Find yourself a co-working space instead, and we’ll pay

🪴 Make use of our home office set-up budget to get kitted out (a spacious desk, comfy chair, some houseplants, or great tech accessories!), and all this alongside the latest MacBook or PC

🚀 Career development opportunities, including our Leadership Development Program and our Future Leaders Program, as well as online language courses, available budgets for further training and access to LinkedIn Learning

🧘🏽‍♀️ Stay grounded with our free meditation, mindfulness and coaching sessions via our mental wellbeing platform nilo.health

🎉 Regular company retreats, parcelLab events (in-person and online), local and regional meet-ups, as well as team off-sites

🌏 Be part of a motivated, diverse and international team made up of over 34 different nationalities; and with a five-star rating for company culture and employee experience on Glassdoor, you’ll love working here!

About parcelLab

We bring people and brands closer together by closing the experience gap post-sales and beyond, transforming operational complexity into opportunities to outperform for 550+ brands worldwide, including IKEA, Bose, Farfetch and Nespresso.

With offices in Munich, London and Boston, we have been highlighted by the Financial Times as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Europe in 2021.

It’s all in a day’s work for us:

• Monitor over six million shipments per day

• Now actively managing operations experiences in 153 countries across the globe

• Send around thirteen million pro-active, personalized, event-driven emails

• Shipping data comes from more than 150+ carriers worldwide, including DHL, FedEx & DPD

• Creating over 40 million reasons for people to fall in love with brands each day

For brands, that means more chances to create relationships that last. And for the people that buy from them, it means turning mundane operational moments into moments of joy!

Equal Opportunities

parcelLab is an Equal Opportunities Employer. We live the motto always joy, always team, always equality, which means we celebrate diversity and do not accept any form of discrimination or harassment. We believe that diversity enriches our employee experience and allows each of us to deliver the best work possible.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, disability status or other lived experience.

Come be part of our growth – contribute your ideas and share in our success as we continue to improve the post-sales customer journey for millions of people every day.