Rodeo
ResourcesPartnersSign in

Sparta

Staff Backend Engineer

London
Posted about 2 months ago
Sign up to applySee more jobs like this

How your CV stacks up

1Upload CV
2Analyse CV
3Improve CV

Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role

?%

Hi, we’re Sparta Commodities!

At Sparta, we’re on a mission to build the next generation of commodity trading platforms - replacing the fragmented tools that traders typically rely on with a single, powerful dashboard. Our product is a data-driven platform that aggregates real-time feeds from across the commodities domain, transforming them into intuitive, actionable visualisations within one unified interface. Users can explore pre-built data views or define their own custom formulas to create tailored insights.

To deliver on this vision, our engineers tackle significant distributed systems challenges on a daily basis, where designing for reliability and performance at scale is essential to ensuring a seamless user experience. As we unlock the next level of scale, these challenges become even more critical. We’re looking to bring on senior engineers with experience building data-intensive applications at scale to help drive this next phase of growth.

We’re also looking for people who thrive in an empowered environment - individuals who are comfortable being given problems to solve rather than solutions to implement. You should enjoy working at pace, value autonomy, and prefer to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. As a senior member of the team, you’ll be comfortable contributing to the product direction, engaging with stakeholders, and playing a key role in mentoring and developing our more junior engineers.

Whereas Sparta is a remote-first company, for this role we’re looking for someone who values a hybrid working style, which in a typical week could involve spending a couple of days in the office - with flexibility built in.

We’ve recently secured a $42M Series B funding round and are scaling aggressively. It’s a great time to join us and help build the future of market intelligence for commodity trading.

What You’ll Be Doing:

Help lead the design, build, and maintenance of distributed backend systems powering both real-time and analytical data processing. Optimise data pipelines and services for low latency, high throughput, and scalability. Collaborate closely with the broader engineering team and cross-functional stakeholders to ensure alignment on technical direction and product goals. Drive architectural decisions that strengthen system reliability, performance, and scalability. Contribute to the definition and realisation of our target architecture, helping guide the evolution of the platform. Mentor and support other engineers through design reviews, technical discussions, and knowledge sharing

Reasons to use Rodeo

I’m in my final year doing Economics and I don’t know whether to apply for grad schemes now or do a masters first. What do you think?

Honest answer — it depends on where you want to end up. A lot of top grad schemes (Big 4, civil service, banking) don’t need a masters. Let’s look at the ones you’d be competitive for now, and we can decide if a masters actually adds anything.

Also worth knowing: most autumn 2026 applications are open now. Timing matters more than you think.

Start with a chat, not a search bar

Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.

P

Graduate Consultant — 2026 Scheme

PwC·London, UK
£35,000/yr

Why you're a good match

Strong

Your economics background and your summer at a regional bank line up with what PwC looks for on the consulting scheme. Applications close in four weeks.

See breakdown
Save jobNot relevant
View details

It searches the market for you

Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.

Why you're a good match

You’ve got the grades and the economics background, and your bank internship is exactly the experience this scheme looks for. Apply soon — deadlines close within the month.

See breakdown
Strong

Experience fit

Your summer at the bank plus your econometrics coursework map directly to the day-one responsibilities on this scheme — client modelling, market briefings, and deal support.

See breakdown
Strong

Only hits

No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.

About You:

7+ years of experience as a software engineer, with a strong track record of delivering production-quality systems. 2+ years working within a product-focused organisation, collaborating closely with cross-functional teams. Proven experience building data-intensive applications at scale and deploying them to production environments. Ability to effectively reason about system trade-offs, including throughput, latency, consistency, and cost. Comfortable working with multiple programming languages such as Kotlin, Java, Python, and TypeScript. Equally comfortable designing holistic, high-level architecture as well as diving deep into low-level implementation details. Experienced in building, analysing, and interpreting system observability (metrics, logging, tracing). Experienced in designing, building, and deploying services in cloud environments such as AWS or GCP. Experienced in working with core infrastructure technologies tooling such as Kafka, Flink, Redis and/or clustered Postgres

Nice to have experience:

Experience working within or closely with DevOps, SRE and or infrastructure teams Experience leading teams or managing engineers, driving both delivery and technical excellence. Exposure to complex distributed environments with demanding constraints such as high throughput, low latency, or large-scale datasets.

Why Join Sparta?

At Sparta, our culture is built on innovation, collaboration, and high performance. We thrive in a fast-paced environment where initiative is celebrated, challenges are embraced, and impact is rewarded.

Equity in a high-growth, VC-backed company $42M in Series B funding—strong market traction and investment Early-stage growth—build your career as we scale Market-leading product—we are redefining energy trading intelligence Top-tier tools and technology to support your success

What’s the culture like at Sparta?

At Sparta, our culture is not just a set of values written on a wall—it's a way of life. We embrace a dynamic environment where initiative is celebrated, challenges are met head-on, and innovation thrives.

Get help with your application

Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.

Get help applying for this job

You'll collaborate with like-minded individuals who are passionate about our mission and deeply committed to crafting outstanding products and achieving success for our customers.

Our values: Ask for forgiveness, not permission: We are building a category-defining company, and that requires speed, boldness, and ownership. If you see something that needs doing, do it. Don’t wait. Own it. If it goes wrong, learn fast and fix it. Celebrate initiative. Mistakes are feedback, not failure. Discomfort is where growth happens: Growth doesn’t come from playing it safe. It comes from stretching beyond what you already know. Embrace change, seek new challenges, push your boundaries. We reward those who are brave enough to try, fail, and learn. Stay hungry, ditch the ego: Spartans are ambitious - but for the mission, not for the politics. Leave your ego at the door. Titles don’t matter. Results do. Focus on what drives real outcomes, not what makes you look good. Ambition fuels progress, and humility keeps us grounded. Fall in love with the problem: We exist to solve real customer problems - not to push our ideas. Always start with their needs, not our assumptions. Everything else is noise. Challenge openly, support fully: We grow through truth, not silence. Feedback is a gift - but only when it’s shared with courage and care. Radical candour builds trust. We embrace diverse debate, but once a decision is made, we align and wholeheartedly commit.

What we offer:

Flexible working model Attractive company stock option plan Dynamic, international work environment with a strong focus on innovation A real performance-led business with support for you to achieve your career goals A range of local benefits personalized to you

Sparta Commodities is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and promotes diversity within its workforce. We are determined that suitably qualified persons will never receive less favorable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, race, veteran status or any other basis covered by appropriate law.

Trusted by 25,000+ job seekers

“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

Jessica, London

Get help applying for this job

Skills

Distributed Systems
Data Processing
Data Pipelines
Cloud Environments
Kotlin
Java
Python
TypeScript
System Observability
Kafka
Flink
Redis
Postgres
DevOps
SRE
Technical Leadership

Location

London, England, United Kingdom

Sign up to applySee more jobs like this