Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Backend Engineer role sits at the intersection of SaaS-scale data infrastructure and product personalization. In subscription platforms, recommendations are a core retention lever, and the work described focuses on the foundational systems that ingest event-driven behavior, model it reliably, and serve it back to downstream experiences like Home and Search. That combination—platform engineering plus personalization outcomes—is a recurring pattern across mature SaaS businesses that operate at high request volume and high data velocity.
From a SaaS career perspective, the role builds durable expertise in operating data-heavy backends under real-world constraints: pipeline reliability, schema evolution, experimentation support, and productionisation. Experience with distributed processing and cloud-native tooling (e.g., Beam/Scio, BigQuery, GCP) translates well to other SaaS domains where teams need trustworthy behavioral datasets to power analytics, lifecycle messaging, and ML-assisted features. The emphasis on deploy-and-operate services also strengthens ownership skills that matter in product-led environments.
This position is best suited to engineers who enjoy building internal platforms used by multiple stakeholders and who like working close to data without being solely in a data engineering track. It will fit someone motivated by measurable product impact, careful systems design, and collaborative iteration across engineering and product partners.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
The Personalization (PZN) team makes deciding what to play next on Spotify easier and more enjoyable for every listener. We seek to understand the world of music, podcasts and audiobooks better than anyone else so that we can make great recommendations to every individual and keep the world listening. Every day, hundreds of millions of people all over the world use the products we build which include destinations like Home and Search as well as original playlists such as Made For You, Discover Weekly and Daily Mix.
We are looking for a Backend Engineer with data experience to join our team. We build the fundamental platform to ingest, model, materialize high-scale, and serve at scale, event-driven user behavior data so Spotify can make personalized recommendations. Our platform tools support easy experimentation and productionisation. This is a unique opportunity to help develop and shape the way Spotify recommendations work. You’ll be able to grow your skills in engineering at scale, drive long term platform vision, and join a high-energy, positive team environment!
Join us and you’ll keep millions of users listening to great recommendations every day.
\n
What You'll Do- Work with large-scale data pipelines with data processing frameworks like Scio, BigQuery, Google Cloud Platform and Apache Beam.
- Develop, deploy, and operate Java services that impact millions of users.
- Work towards supporting machine learning projects powering the experience that suits each user individually.
- Collaborate with other engineers, product managers and stakeholders, taking on learning and leadership opportunities that will arise every single day.
- Deliver scalable, testable, maintainable, and high-quality code.
- Share knowledge, promote standard methodologies, making your team the best version of itself through mentorship and constructive accountability.
Who You Are- You are familiar with the concepts of data modeling, data access, and data storage techniques.
- You are familiar with distributed data processing frameworks (ex: Beam, Spark).
- You want to work on a team employing agile software development processes, data-driven development, and responsible experimentation.
- You value opportunities to work collaboratively.
Where You'll Be- We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! For this role, you can be within the North Americas region as long as we have a work location.
- This team operates within the Eastern Standard time zone for collaboration.
\n
The United States base range for this position is $ 125,561- $ 179,374, plus equity. The benefits available for this position include health insurance, six month paid parental leave, 401(k) retirement plan, a monthly meal allowance, 23 paid days off, 13 paid flexible holidays. These ranges may be modified in the future.
Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.
At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know - we’re here to support you in any way we can.
Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be passionate about these creators. Everything we do is driven by our love for music and podcasting. Today, we are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service.
