SENIOR STAFF ENGINEER

About

THE WORLD’S MOST CONNECTED POST-PURCHASE AND RETURNS NETWORK

ZigZag France (formally Shipup) We are an award‑winning eCommerce returns and post‑purchase specialist, founded in 2015 by our CEO, Al Gerrie.

With over 250 team members across the UK, Bulgaria, France, Portugal, Germany and Spain, we’re building the world’s most connected post‑purchase and returns network — reducing complexity, driving sustainability, and reshaping how retailers engage customers after the sale.

Today, more than 1100 companies use our SaaS platform across 170 countries. Our leading enterprise retail and logistics clients include The Very Group, New Look, Boden, Selfridges, Sports Direct, The Hut Group, Swarovski, L’Occitane, PhotoBox, Carrefour, Land’s End and DHL.

Discover more about what we do: https://www.zigzag.global/about-us

We were the experts in returns. Now we are the experts in the whole post‑purchase experience

Job Description

Job Title

Senior Staff Engineer (Backend & Infrastructure)

Contract

Permanent (CDI)

Location

Paris or full‑remote position in France. You must already be living in France and have the legal right to work here without visa sponsorship, as we’re unable to provide sponsorship for this position.

Our Culture and Values

Our culture is built on three core values, Start‑up Spirit, Human Heart, and a Grown‑up Mindset which guide how we collaborate and make decisions.

It isn’t something written on posters – it’s something we bring to life every day through our actions, our relationships, and how we show up for each other and our customers.

Everyone plays a role in shaping our culture through how we communicate, support one another, and celebrate success. Being a ZigZagger means taking ownership, bringing curiosity and energy to everything you do, showing resilience when challenges arise, and leading with care by putting “we before me.” You’ll use sound judgment, stay open to new perspectives, and continuously look for ways to learn, grow, and improve.

About The Role

We’re looking for an experienced Senior Staff Engineer (Backend & Infrastructure) to play a key role within the team. This position offers significant impact across the product, with broad collaboration across ZigZag as we unify our post‑purchase and returns products into a single, seamless offering. As we advance this transition, you’ll be instrumental in shaping the strategy and enabling teams to execute it effectively across our most critical areas.

You will help define and model best practices, setting clear standards for behaviours, performance, and technical excellence within the backend and infrastructure domains.

Your primary objective will be to drive the development, reliability, and scalability of backend systems and infrastructure, ensuring they effectively support the organisation’s ongoing growth.

This role offers a unique opportunity to influence the direction and success of our product and tech team significantly. If you are passionate about leading backend and infrastructure efforts in a dynamic and growing environment, we would love to hear from you.

Our Tech Stack

• Ruby on Rails and Go for backend
• TypeScript, React (with Hooks), Redux, React Testing Library, CSS Modules, Webpack (with federated modules) for frontend
• Hosted on GCP
• Datadog, LogDNA, Sentry for monitoring
• Monolithic infrastructure + introduction of microservices (3 services today)
• PostgreSQL + Elasticsearch + RabbitMQ + Redis for storage
• Kubernetes + Docker for ops

Key Responsibilities

• Play a pivotal role in developing a coherent technology strategy that aligns with the organization's overall goals and product priorities.
• Ensure that architectural decisions for key product initiatives are in harmony with their objectives.
• Ensure service reliability: Managing incidents, setting & measuring service level objectives, maintaining & evolving recovery plans, evolving application observability & monitoring.
• Implement and oversee quality assurance and security processes and practices on the backend side.
• Oversee and optimize our cloud infrastructure, ensuring resource allocation is balanced, especially during high-peak periods like Black Friday.
• Actively participate in refining engineering processes such as continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) and code reviews to enhance team productivity, and efficiency, and elevate product quality and security.
• Evaluating relevance to switch from a worker-based approach to an event-driven one
• Pairing with squad developers on day‑to‑day product work to share knowledge & practices
• Contribute to defining and shaping tech and product initiatives.
• Responding to and