Application Guide

How to Apply for Senior Backend Engineer - Acquisition (f/m/x) - remote

at refurbed

🏢 About refurbed

refurbed is a fast-growing European marketplace for refurbished electronics, combining sustainability with top-quality products. The company's mission to 'save the planet' is central to its culture, and it operates fully remote across EU time zones, offering a modern, collaborative engineering environment.

About This Role

As a Senior Backend Engineer on the Acquisition team, you'll own critical APIs and services that power customer acquisition and marketplace growth. Your work directly impacts user onboarding, third-party integrations, and system reliability, making you a key contributor to the company's expansion.

💡 A Day in the Life

Your day starts with a stand-up with your distributed team, followed by deep work on designing a new API endpoint for a third-party integration. You'll review a pull request from a junior engineer, then dive into monitoring dashboards to ensure production systems are healthy. After lunch, you might pair-program on a complex SQL query or document a new service architecture. The day ends with async updates and a quick chat with a teammate about an incident post-mortem.

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🎯 Who refurbed Is Looking For

  • 7+ years of backend engineering experience, with deep expertise in Go and building scalable, distributed systems in production.
  • Strong background in SQL and relational database design, with the ability to optimize queries and schema for high-traffic applications.
  • Proven experience integrating third-party APIs and services, handling authentication, rate limiting, and error handling.
  • Based in a European time zone, with excellent English communication skills and a mentoring mindset to uplift junior engineers.

📝 Tips for Applying to refurbed

1

Highlight your Go experience explicitly, with specific projects or contributions (e.g., open-source work, production systems you built).

2

Showcase your experience with third-party API integrations, mentioning any payment gateways, CRM, or analytics tools you've worked with.

3

Emphasize your ownership of production systems: include examples of monitoring, incident response, and performance optimization.

4

Tailor your resume to mention distributed systems concepts (e.g., service-oriented architecture, microservices, message queues).

5

Mention any sustainability or marketplace experience, even tangentially, to show alignment with refurbed's mission.

✉️ What to Emphasize in Your Cover Letter

["Your passion for sustainability and how refurbed's mission resonates with you personally.", 'Concrete examples of designing and maintaining scalable APIs in Go, with measurable outcomes (e.g., latency reduction, uptime improvement).', 'Your experience mentoring junior engineers and contributing to engineering culture (e.g., code reviews, knowledge sharing).', 'Your ability to work autonomously in a remote, EU-based team, with strong communication and collaboration skills.']

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🔍 Research Before Applying

To stand out, make sure you've researched:

  • → Read refurbed's blog or engineering articles to understand their tech stack and engineering culture.
  • → Explore their marketplace to see the user flow for acquisition (sign-up, onboarding, first purchase) and think about backend challenges.
  • → Check their LinkedIn or Glassdoor to understand company values, team structure, and remote work practices.
  • → Look into their competitors (e.g., Back Market) and understand what differentiates refurbed's approach.

💬 Prepare for These Interview Topics

Based on this role, you may be asked about:

1 Design a scalable API for a new marketplace feature (e.g., product listing, checkout flow).
2 How would you integrate a third-party payment provider? Discuss error handling, idempotency, and monitoring.
3 Walk through a time you diagnosed and resolved a production incident. What monitoring and alerting did you use?
4 How do you approach mentoring a junior engineer? Give a specific example.
5 Explain your experience with SQL and database design: schema for a high-traffic marketplace, indexing strategies, and query optimization.
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⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid

  • Not demonstrating deep Go expertise – avoid generic backend experience without specific Go projects or contributions.
  • Overlooking the remote aspect: failing to mention experience with async communication, documentation, or time zone coordination.
  • Ignoring the mentoring requirement: not providing examples of how you've helped junior colleagues grow.

📅 Application Timeline

This position is open until filled. However, we recommend applying as soon as possible as roles at mission-driven organizations tend to fill quickly.

Typical hiring timeline:

1

Application Review

1-2 weeks

2

Initial Screening

Phone call or written assessment

3

Interviews

1-2 rounds, usually virtual

✓

Offer

Congratulations!

Ready to Apply?

Good luck with your application to refurbed!

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