Senior Full Stack Engineer

Did you know that some cat food contains as little as 4% meat? Cats are carnivores – they need meat to thrive – but cat food companies use powdered animal derivatives because it’s cheaper and easier, and they top it up with grains and fillers that cats find hard to digest. It’s all about shelf life and profit; not what cats really need.

We do things differently at KatKin. We’re changing the cat food industry, with our 100% Fresh-cooked premium meat recipes, delivered to doorsteps everywhere. Each recipe is designed by our in-house vets and nutritionists, to be the very best (and tastiest) nutrition for cats.
KatKin is building a global challenger brand in cat health and wellbeing, going after a $50B global market. Beyond the core product of Fresh food for cats, KatKin’s vision is to build a set of products and services for Cat Parents to manage their cat’s health. Everything from litter and treats, to digital health management for your cat.

Today KatKin is a UK D2C business, but plans to expand into Retail during 2024, and then international markets, likely the US, from 2025 onwards.

Millions of cat parents engage with KatKin every month, and as a Full-Stack Engineer at KatKin, you’ll work alongside our Engineering team in bringing our hardcore cat parent’s digital journey to life.

You will work closely with our Director of Engineering, Product and Design, and the rest of the Engineering team to help meet the day-to-day and long-term ambitions of KatKin and its stakeholders. You will own and create the components and technology necessary to provide a best-in-class experience for cat parents whenever they visit our website or use our subscription service.
We are a close-knit, focused team who are committed to consistently delivering high quality technology, on time, as part of a tech-driven mindset that lets us focus on building the right solutions for scaling our business into the future.

Our current tech stack makes heavy use of TypeScript, particularly NextJS on the frontend, NestJS microservices on the backend with Prisma, and various other technologies and tools like Postgresql and RabbitMQ. We also have a more mature backend written in Kotlin, as well as a number of legacy web pages written in various technologies.

• Delivering functionality across the entire stack, in line with our software requirements
• Evaluating and implementing new technologies to scale and streamline our software pipelines
• Working closely with our product team & stakeholders to build scalable, fit-for-purpose solutions for serving our customers
• Shared responsibility for the maintenance and quality of codebases and infrastructure

• Good familiarity with RESTful web services.
• Excellent understanding of TypeScript, React and Node.
• Mission-driven, high energy and a natural sense of curiosity and urgency for results.
• A genuine passion for technology and KatKin’s mission.
• Experience working in a fast paced environment, taking ownership of features end to end, and balancing between velocity and technical quality.

• Experience within eCommerce and/or payments
• Good understanding of OOP and/or functional paradigms.
• Good understanding of NextJS or other similar server-focused frontend metaframework. Bonus points for having used React’s server components API.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and tools, particularly Github Actions
• Experience using or deploying into AWS and/or Kubernetes, using IaC tools such as Terraform or CDK
• Experience working with monorepos and tooling such as NX/Lerna/Bazel.
• Experience with Cypress/Playwright/any test automation tools and processes
• Familiarity or interest with observability and metrics tooling.
• You have a cat, or two or three! 

• Career-defining opportunity in being instrumental to scaling our brand, fast
• No egos and a small close-knit team
• 25 days of holiday every year plus your birthday off and an additional day for every year at KatKin
• 4 week WFA (work from anywhere) policy
• Up to 2 days WFH every week
• 12-weeks paternity / maternity leave
• Discount on KatKin fresh food and pantry products for your cat
• Comprehensive AXA health insurance including optical and dental
• Yearly personal development budget
• Company pension
• Regular company socials and lunch provided on Mondays
• All the fresh fruit, soft drinks, tea and coffee you can eat and drink; great banter and a cat (and dog) friendly office

We aim to encourage a culture where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and actively encourage applications from all backgrounds. At KatKin we celebrate differences, and everything that makes our colleagues unique, by upholding an inclusive environment in which we can all thrive.