---
title: 'Staff Back-end Engineer at Preply'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-back-end-engineer-preply-london-1cf8rjqpxwv0'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Staff Back-end Engineer at Preply

- **Company:** [Preply](https://feeny.ai/companies/preply)
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2025-12-23
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/preply/2c3f4157-00db-4144-a041-575b2c99d952/application

**Skills:** Python, System Design, API Design, Software Architecture

> The Staff Back-end Engineer will shape technical strategy and drive execution for Preply's Learning or Monetization tribes. This role involves architecting scalable systems, improving engineering excellence, and mentoring senior engineers to support the company's vision of AI-powered personalized learning.

## Job description

WE POWER PEOPLE’S PROGRESS.

At Preply, we’re all about creating life-changing learning experiences. We help people discover the magic of the perfect tutor, craft a personalised learning journey, and stay motivated to keep growing. Our approach is human-led, tech-enabled - and it’s creating real impact.

We’ve just reached unicorn status with a $150M Series D, accelerating our vision to transform education through human-led, AI-enhanced learning. Today, 100,000+ tutors teach 90+ languages to learners in 180 countries - and we’re only getting started. As a category-defining company, we’re shaping what the future of learning looks like at global scale.

Every Preply lesson sparks change, fuels ambition, and drives progress that matters. Joining Preply means helping define the future of education at global scale, and building something that truly matters for millions of people, every day.

Meet the team!

This is a high-impact individual contributor role with broad scope.

At Preply, being a Staff Engineer is about multiplying impact beyond a single team. You will operate at both a tribe and organizational level, helping define what problems matter, align teams around them, and drive solutions across the entire organization. You’ll partner closely with engineering and product leadership to shape our technical direction and raise the bar for how we build and scale.

You’ll be joining one of our Product Tribes — Learning or Monetization:

- In Learning, you’ll help build the next generation of AI-powered, personalized learning experiences for millions of users.
- In Monetization, you’ll work on high-impact systems like payments, subscriptions, and bookings — directly influencing revenue, conversion, and the future of how tutors earn on the platform.

## WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING

- Shape technical strategy & drive execution. Partner with Engineering and Product leadership to define and co-own the tribe’s engineering strategy and technical roadmap. Lead end-to-end strategic initiatives, from ideation to delivery, translating product vision into clear technical execution, aligning scope, milestones, and delivering measurable outcomes iteratively.
- Lead architecture & platform evolution. Act as a key architect for the future state of our systems. Evolve core services into a scalable, reliable platform by defining target architectures, driving migrations and deprecations, and ensuring technical excellence across performance, availability, and cost efficiency, always balancing long-term vision with pragmatism.
- Raise engineering excellence & developer experience. Continuously improve how we build. Identify bottlenecks, reduce friction, and drive initiatives that increase team productivity. Champion high engineering standards through RFCs, post-mortems, and quality frameworks (instrumentation, evaluations), ensuring we build the right things in the right way.
- Operate as a multiplier. Extend your impact beyond your own work. Mentor and influence Senior Engineers, Tech Leads, and Engineering Managers, contribute to hiring, and elevate the overall technical bar. Stay hands-on for the most complex and high-impact challenges, leading by example where it matters most.
- Drive technical decision-making. Own critical technical and strategic decisions, including build-vs-buy trade-offs. Lead tooling and vendor evaluations with a clear understanding of total cost of ownership, ensuring decisions align with both technical needs and business goals.

## WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED

- Strong engineering foundations & system thinking. You have a solid background in software engineering and architecture, with experience designing and evolving large-scale systems. You’re able to derive technical strategy from business goals and understand how APIs, services, and data flows translate into real user impact.
- Hands-on, strategic mindset. You connect high-level strategy with execution. You’re comfortable diving into code, building proofs of concept, and iterating quickly with teams to validate ideas.
- End-to-end ownership. You take ownership from ambiguous problem definition through to delivery, launch, and operational stability, with a clear focus on measurable outcomes.
- Ability to influence and align. You’re an excellent communicator, able to articulate technical vision, trade-offs, and business value to engineering, product, and leadership stakeholders. You influence without relying on formal authority and help align multiple teams toward shared goals.
- Product-minded engineering. You approach engineering with a strong product lens - making thoughtful trade-offs and connecting technical decisions to user experience and business impact.
- Comfort operating across domains. You’re able to move fluidly between different types of work - new feature development, system design, architecture evolution, migrations, and process improvements.
- Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills. You’re analytical and creative in your approach, able to explore multiple solutions, evaluate trade-offs, and make pragmatic decisions under uncertainty.
- Driving engineering excellence. You have experience raising the bar across teams — mentoring senior engineers, influencing tech leads, contributing to hiring, and shaping engineering culture through practices like RFCs, post-mortems, and quality frameworks.
- Comfort in evolving environments. You thrive in environments that are changing and growing, and are able to adapt as priorities and context evolve.
- AI Expertise: You're a forefront user of Agentic AI. You're able to bring hands on experience and start influencing the team beyond code generation; reserving judgment for architecture, business logic, and security, using AI as a thought partner and able to set up quality gates and safety nets to enhance existing engineering workflows and propose AI-native alternatives.

WHY YOU’LL LOVE IT AT PREPLY:

- An open, collaborative, dynamic and diverse culture.
- Generous monthly allowance for lessons on Preply.com http://Preply.com .
- Learning & Development budget, including time off for your self-development.
- Competitive financial package with equity, and leave allowance.
- Opportunity to shape the lives of learners and tutors from over 175 countries through language learning and teaching.

## OUR PRINCIPLES

- Care to change the world - We are passionate about our work and care deeply about its impact to be life changing.
- We do it for learners - For both Preply and tutors, learners are why we do what we do. Every day we focus on empowering tutors to deliver an exceptional learning experience.
- Keep perfecting - To create an outstanding customer experience, we focus on simplicity, smoothness, and enjoyment, continually perfecting it as every detail matters.
- Now is the time - In a fast-paced world, it matters how quickly we act. Now is the time to make great things happen.
- Disciplined execution - What makes us disciplined is the excellence in our execution. We set clear goals, focus on what matters, and utilize our resources efficiently.
- Dive deep - We leverage business acumen and curiosity to investigate disparities between numbers and stories, unlocking meaningful insights to guide our decisions.
- Growth mindset - We proactively seek growth opportunities and believe today's best performance becomes tomorrow's starting point. We humbly embrace feedback and learn from setbacks.
- Raise the bar - We raise our performance standards continuously, alongside each new hire and promotion. We build diverse and high-performing teams that can make a real difference.
- Challenge, disagree and commit - We value open and candid communication, even when we don’t fully agree. We speak our minds, challenge when necessary, and fully commit to decisions once made.
- One Preply - We prioritize collaboration, inclusion, and the success of our team over personal ambitions. Together, we support and celebrate each other's progress.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION

Preply.com http://Preply.com is committed to creating an inclusive environment where people of diverse backgrounds can thrive. We believe that the presence of different opinions and viewpoints is a key ingredient for our success as a multicultural Ed-Tech company. That means that Preply will consider all applications for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or veteran status.

## About Preply

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Preply is a human-led, AI-enabled online language learning marketplace that connects over 100,000 tutors with millions of learners worldwide for personalized 1-on-1 lessons.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series D – unicorn, $1.2B valuation as of January 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Brookline, Massachusetts, United States (with global hubs in Barcelona, London, Kyiv, and New York)
- **Founded**: 2012
- **Founders**: Kirill Bigai (CEO) and Dmytro Voloshyn (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Language learning / EdTech
- **Target customers**: B2C (individual learners) and B2B (corporate language training via Preply Business); primarily B2C but growing enterprise segment.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "Power people’s progress" – combining the flexibility of online learning with personalized lessons from expert tutors to create life‑changing experiences.

## Products & Services
- **Preply Marketplace**: A platform where learners book 1‑on‑1 live lessons with tutors teaching 90+ languages and 120+ subjects. Tutors manage scheduling, payments, and an integrated video classroom.
- **Preply Business**: Corporate language training solution for companies to upskill employees, offering tailored programs and reporting.
- **AI‑Powered Tools**: New‑generation AI‑enhanced tutoring features (including AI‑generated content and adaptive learning tools) designed to supplement human‑led instruction. The company also provides enterprise OpenAI licenses to employees.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: $1.2 billion (post‑money after January 2026 Series D) – becoming a unicorn.
- **Key Metric**: Over $100K total funding? Actually total disclosed funding is ~$150M+ (Series A, B, C) plus the $150M Series D. Annual revenue is not publicly available (private company). Key growth metric: 100,000+ tutors across 180 countries.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: WestCap (led Series D), Owl Ventures, Horizon Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Full In Partners, Diligent Capital Partners, Point Nine Capital (led Seed round).
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Unicorn status reached in Jan 2026.
  - B2B segment “Preply Business” growing.
  - Completed first employee tender offer in May 2026 to provide early liquidity.
  - CEO Kirill Bigai named EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2026 New England Finalist.
  - 700+ employees globally; 62+ nationalities represented.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Network effects**: Large two‑sided marketplace with 100K+ tutors and millions of learners creates a strong moat in the $115B global language learning market.
- **Human‑led + AI‑enabled**: Differentiates from purely self‑study apps (e.g., Duolingo) by combining live human interaction with AI‑powered personalization.
- **Global reach**: Tutors from 180 countries teaching 90+ languages, enabling learners to find native speakers for almost any language.
- **Trust & quality**: Focus on tutor quality and learner progress, with internal engagement surveys showing 86% of employees proud to work at Preply.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI integration**: Deepen AI capabilities to enhance tutoring (content generation, adaptive learning paths) while keeping human interaction central.
- **B2B expansion**: Grow Preply Business as a key revenue driver for corporate language training.
- **Global hub growth**: Strengthen presence in existing hubs (Barcelona, London, Kyiv, New York) and expand into new markets.
- **Talent & culture**: Continue building a people‑first culture with employee liquidity events and strong engagement scores.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Guided by five “Preply principles” (Ambition, Keep Perfecting, Care to Change the World, etc.). 86% of employees are proud to work at Preply (2025 survey); 84% would recommend it as a great place to work.
- **Work model**: Hybrid working model (flexible remote/in‑office). Main office in Barcelona with hubs in New York, London, and Kyiv.
- **Perks**: Competitive salaries, stock options, L&D days, monthly Preply platform allowance, wellness benefit, health insurance, flexible compensation program, after‑work gatherings, offsite events, enterprise OpenAI licenses.
- **Hiring process**: 4 stages – TA chat, interviews with hiring team (may include tech test), a final task (case study / peer programming / deep technical discussion), and a Culture Champion interview.
- **Global team**: 62+ nationalities and 700+ employees, offering a diverse, collaborative environment.

## Sources
1. [Preply Careers](https://preply.com/en/careers)
2. [Preply About Us](https://preply.com/en/about-us)
3. [Preply Homepage](https://preply.com/)
4. [CB Insights Company Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/preply)
5. [Preply LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/preply)

## Other roles at Preply

- [Senior Brand Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-brand-designer-preply-barcelona-44jjsn5v1jgp) — Barcelona, Spain
- [Senior Data Analyst - B2B](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-analyst-b2b-preply-barcelona-tn0mzxdyr1e9) — Barcelona, Spain
- [Senior II Full-Stack Engineer (back-end heavy)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ii-full-stack-engineer-back-end-heavy-preply-london-0tcnk20meddg) — London, United Kingdom
- [Senior Principal Applied AI Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-principal-applied-ai-scientist-preply-london-4v2mryfa1vns) — London, United Kingdom
- [Senior Principal Applied AI Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-principal-applied-ai-scientist-preply-barcelona-3qjbjcsa1310) — Barcelona, Spain
- [Senior Manager, Tutor Brand](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-tutor-brand-preply-barcelona-zg798vmyg1xz) — Barcelona, Spain
- [Senior Manager, Tutor Brand](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-tutor-brand-preply-london-npkkyvk4zhcf) — London, United Kingdom
- [Video Editor](https://feeny.ai/job/video-editor-preply-barcelona-929wjhnf19fv) — Barcelona, Spain
- [SEM Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/sem-manager-preply-barcelona-r966qm31vcr5) — Barcelona, Spain
- [Staff Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-data-scientist-preply-london-w1nbvqtq0ey8) — London, United Kingdom