Founding Engineer

Location: France or Belgium — as long as you can be in our Paris Office within 3 hours by train for our team days twice a month.

Experience: 5+ years (start-up or scale-up experience required)

At Poppins, we dream of a world where people can own less and have more. Our mission is to shift from individual ownership to collective abundance, empowering everyone to share their resources for the greater good.

Now, we're gearing up to conquer France & therefore we need a versatile engineer to help us scale.

🧩 The Role

We are looking for a Founding Engineer with a strong backend mastery to join our talented tech team.

At Poppins, Engineers report directly to the CEO, they have a central role to play on the Product overall. They work closely with all stakeholders (Ops and Marketing), co-build with them and ship often, in small bits. We are at this exciting stage where we all take initiatives, try new things, accept to fail and celebrate the wins.

While your heart beats for the backend, you are comfortable jumping into the frontend to ensure a seamless end-to-end user experience.

Your missions:

• Help nail the Product-Market fit: Develop robust features that drive user acquisition and activation.
• Performance & UX: Optimize the user journey from the server-side logic down to the "Optimistic UI" interactions.
• Data: Bring production data to our internal tools so that anyone in the company can monitor and act upon our results

💻 Our Tech Stack & Culture

We stay on the cutting edge to move fast without breaking things. You can explore our full Tech Radar here.

• Backend: Python (FastAPI), PostgreSQL & Algolia
• Frontend: TypeScript, React, ****React Native, Expo.
• Data: BigQuery, DBT, Metabase
• Workflow: Pragmatic, iterative building. We use high-velocity tools like Figma, Linear, Graphite, Claude Code.

🌟 What We’re Looking For

• The Experience: 5+ years of professional experience, specifically within start-up or scale-up environments. You understand the pace, the pivots, and the need for scalable code.
• Backend Expertise: Deep experience in Python (FastAPI, Django, or Flask) or similar frameworks/languages. You know how to build and maintain resilient APIs.
• Frontend Comfort: You aren't afraid of the UI. You can navigate modern frontend stacks and care about how the data you serve looks to the user.
• Pragmatic Problem-Solving: You have a track record of tackling scalability challenges without over-engineering.
• Communication: Fluent in English & French. You are a collaborator who isn't afraid to challenge ideas to make the product better.

⌛What do we expect from you in … ?

• 7 days
  • Your first change has reached production
  • You had 1:1s with everybody in the company
• 30 days
  • You released a whole project in production
  • You get a deep understanding of the whole codebase
  • You suggest improvements for the user experience
• 60 days
  • Your changes has improved significantly a company’s KPI
  • You have strong opinions on how to tweak our infra to improve performance/costs
• 90 days
  • You are completely autonomous
  • You are able to handle production incidents

🎁 Why Poppins?

• Direct Impact: Join a tight-knit team of 12 (and an engineering team of 3, including you) where your code moves from concept to reality in days, not months.
• Modern Work Culture: Remote-first across France, flexible hours, and a focus on deep work over endless meetings.
• International team : our core language is English and we have colleagues from different cultures and countries.
• Ownership: Lead growth-focused initiatives that directly influence user retention and experience.

🫶 Our Values

• Spread Positivity: We are solution-oriented and keep the energy high.
• Blaze the Trail: We innovate boldly where others follow.
• Take Care: Accountability and trust are our foundation.
• The More the Merrier: We grow inclusively. Everyone is welcome at the table.

You match with at least 75% of all this? Let’s chat!

Recruitment Process

• Fill the application form and upload your CV + answer in your cover letter these 3 questions :
  • What relevant previous experiences do you bring to Poppins?
  • Why do you want to join Poppins?
  • How do you like to work?
• First interview : Florian, our Backend Engineer, will give you a call
• Technical interview : 2h session of coding + system design interview
• In person meeting : Come to the office - meet our Leadership Team + have lunch with the Tech team

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