About Kota

Kota is making insurance and retirement benefits as accessible as modern software. We do this across the Kota Platform - the world’s first fully integrated benefits platform and Kota Embed, our embedded insurance and retirement product for platforms. Our mission is to make insurance and benefits more accessible and delightful to this generation of employees.

Today, we power benefits for hundreds of companies and thousands of employees from some of the most exciting and progressive employers in Europe, like Carwow, Tines, Zoe, Remote, and many more. Kota was started in 2022 and has raised €20m from Europe’s top technology investors, including Eurazeo, EQT Ventures, Northzone, Frontline, and angels, including Job Van Der Voort of Remote, Romain Huet, formerly of Stripe, now Open AI, and David Clarke, formerly of Workday. The companies our investors have previously backed or built include Spotify, Airbnb, Klarna, Truelayer, Snapchat, Workday, Personio, Workvivo, Pointy, Workable, Wayflyer, and more.

The Role & Team

We're looking for a Senior Product Engineer (Backend) to join the Investments team — the stream building the infrastructure that powers workplace pensions and retirement savings at Kota. This isn't just backend plumbing. You'll be designing the products that connect pension providers to employers and employees at scale, handling contributions, fund data, payroll integrations, compliance logic, and provider onboarding across multiple markets. It's technically challenging and a space where good product design genuinely changes outcomes for thousands of people.

We're looking for someone with the ability to contribute to the product from start to finish. From initial product design with the rest of the team, architecture and API design, and validating that what we build solves real problems for our customers. The role requires someone who moves fast and ships but also thinks carefully about reliability and correctness because in financial services being precise matters.

What You'll Do

Design and build the backend systems that power Kota's pension and retirement savings products including contribution flows, onboarding flows, provider integrations and employer-facing configuration
Own technical architecture decisions for the Investments stream
Integrate with external pension and savings providers, building robust, well-tested integrations that handle the messiness of real-world financial systems
Collaborate closely with the Product Lead, frontend engineers, and the broader integrations team to deliver features that work seamlessly endto-end
Continuously improve the stability and observability of the systems you own
Contribute to code reviews, technical planning, and a culture of high standards without bureaucracy
Help shape how the Investments team works. This is a senior role and we'll look to you for technical leadership as the team grows

What We're Looking For

6+ years building backend systems in production. We use .NET 8, PostgreSQL and Azure
Experience designing and maintaining integrations with third-party APIs
Strong understanding of data modelling, event-driven patterns, and building for correctness and auditability
Cloud experience with Azure or AWS. You're comfortable owning infrastructure, not just code
You think carefully about reliability, security, and compliance
You thrive at designing the product as a whole, not just the backend APIS. We need someone that will take the initiative and make product decisions
Comfortable with ambiguity and ownership in a fast-growing startup
AI-forward mindset - We are constantly evolving how we how we use AI to build products and improve our systems and engineering practices. You should lean into that, be actively curious about it and want to help push it further

Why Join Us?

Technically interesting problem — pension infrastructure is genuinely complex: multi-provider, multi-market and largely unmodernised. There's a lot of real engineering to do here.
Modern stack — .NET 8+, PostgreSQL, Azure/AWS, event-driven.
Agency — we hire people and trust them. You'll own meaningful parts of the system end-to-end, not just be sent tickets.
High-quality culture — we care about clean design, quality, and thoughtful engineering. You'll work with people who sweat the details.
Impact from day one — we're a small, focused team. What you build ships fast and matters.

Our Values

Care deeply — our products are our story; we look at the details and go the extra mile to delight customers
Integrity — we care deeply about our why and it won't jeopardise our how
Fearless — we exist because we decided to say no to the norm; now we do this every day
Raise the Bar — we push past good enough — expect more, move faster, raise the standard
Ownership — ask why, do the work, get the data, solve the problem, be an owner

Our Hiring Process

We like to keep things simple and respectful of your time.

Introductory Call (30 mins): A casual chat with one or two members of our product team. We'll learn about you and tell you more about Kota and the role.
Technical Interview (~90-120 minutes): A collaborative, open-book session with two of our engineers (sometimes split across two sessions).
You'll work through a real-world problem together. We focus on how you think and approach system.
Call with Founders (30 mins): We're a small but growing team and we'd love to share our vision with you and hear your thoughts.
Final Response: We'll follow up promptly with next steps.

Kota Benefits

Health Insurance via Kota
Workplace Pension with matched contributions up to 5% via Kota
WFH stipend to support your home office setup
Generous Paid Time Off — work hard and take the time you need
Access to office space in Dublin or a co-working space, wherever you're based
Flexible working hours — we're remote-first with some fixed hours for team alignment

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Senior Product Engineer (Backend) - Investments Team

Benefits

Job Description