Senior Software Engineer

About Valeria
Valeria is building the future of HR and payroll in Spain. We're an AI-native platform that automates contracts, payroll, and compliance for companies with high employee turnover (hospitality, delivery, events, agriculture). We're rethinking how an entire industry works—moving from manual, error-prone processes to intelligent automation.
We're a fast-growing startup backed by top investors, disrupting a €5B+ industry that's still stuck in spreadsheets and legacy software.

Your Role

You'll be a core member of our product engineering team, designing and building the infrastructure that powers Valeria. From architecting scalable APIs to integrating with Spanish government systems and building AI-powered features, your work will directly impact how thousands of employees get hired, paid, and managed.

• Design and build scalable backend services using Python (Flask), with clean architecture patterns and modern Python practices

• Architect cloud-native solutions on Azure with focus on reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency

• Build and integrate AI capabilities into the product: document processing, contract generation, compliance automation, and intelligent workflow optimization

• Develop complex integrations with external systems: Spanish Social Security (Seguridad Social), SEPE, payroll providers, e-signature APIs—handling real-world edge cases and compliance requirements

• Implement event-driven architectures and async processing for high-volume operations (batch payroll for thousands of employees)

• Optimize database performance: design PostgreSQL schemas, write efficient queries, implement caching strategies with Redis

• Contribute to frontend when needed (React/TypeScript stack)—we value full-stack mindset

• Establish engineering best practices: CI/CD pipelines, comprehensive testing (pytest, integration tests), code reviews, monitoring and observability

• Own features end-to-end: from technical design and architecture discussions to deployment, monitoring, and iteration based on customer feedback

Mentor engineers and shape technical decisions as we scale the team

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building scalable production systems

• Strong backend engineering skills with modern languages and frameworks—Python, Go, Node.js/TypeScript, Java, Rust, or similar

• Deep understanding of API design (RESTful principles, versioning, authentication)

• Solid database experience: PostgreSQL or similar relational databases, query optimization, schema design

• Cloud infrastructure knowledge: Azure preferred (or AWS/GCP with willingness to learn Azure)—experience with containerization (Docker), orchestration, and IaC

• Experience with async/concurrent programming and distributed systems concepts

• Startup mindset: comfortable with ambiguity, high autonomy, and fast iteration cycles

• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across product, design, and business teams

Highly Valued:

• Experience with Python in production (Flask or similar lightweight frameworks)—if you haven't used Python recently but have strong backend fundamentals, we'll get you up to speed quickly

• Azure cloud experience: App Service, Azure Functions, Azure SQL, Blob Storage, Service Bus, or other Azure services

• AI/ML integration experience: working with LLMs, embeddings, RAG systems, or AI APIs in production environments

• Background in FinTech, HR-tech, or regulated industries (compliance-heavy products, government integrations)

• Event-driven architectures: message queues (Azure Service Bus, SQS, RabbitMQ), streaming, pub/sub patterns

• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Bicep, Pulumi)

• Frontend skills (React, TypeScript, Next.js) for full-stack contributions

⭐️ What makes you a great fit: You're the kind of engineer who cares deeply about code quality, system design, and user impact. You've seen codebases scale (and sometimes struggle to scale). You understand the tradeoffs between speed and perfection in a startup context. You're pragmatic but principled. You're excited to work in a domain where correctness matters—getting payroll wrong affects real people's lives. Bonus points if you're curious about how AI can transform traditionally manual workflows.

Our Stack

• Backend: Python (Flask), clean architecture without heavy frameworks

• AI/ML: LLM integrations, document processing…

• Database: PostgreSQL

• Cloud & Infrastructure: Azure

• Frontend: React, TypeScript, Next.js

• DevOps & CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Azure Monitor, Application Insights

• Integration Layer: RESTful APIs, async job processing, webhooks

Our technical philosophy:
We've built our infrastructure on Azure as our cloud platform, leveraging its enterprise-grade services for reliability and scalability. We've chosen Python with Flask as our backend foundation because it gives us flexibility and control without the overhead of monolithic frameworks. We prioritize clean, testable code over framework magic. We use modern Python practices—type hints, async patterns where needed, comprehensive testing.

As an AI-native product , we're building intelligence into every layer: automating contract generation, extracting data from documents, predicting compliance issues, and optimizing workflows. If you're excited about applying AI to solve real-world business problems (not just building AI for AI's sake), you'll love working here.

We're looking for engineers who are fluent in modern backend development (regardless of your current primary language) and excited to work with Python in a cutting-edge, production-grade environment. If you've built scalable systems in Node.js, Java… or other modern stacks, you'll find our architecture familiar and our codebase approachable.

❤️ What We Offer

• Competitive compensation : €60,000 - €70,000 base salary + equity package

• Free lunch when you're at the office thanks to Kombo & Nora

• Flexible remuneration with Coverflex

• Flexibility : Hybrid setup (HQ in Barcelona), 60 days/year remote work from anywhere

• Unlimited vacation days — take the time you need, no counting days

️ Our hiring process

1. Intro call with People (30 min)

2. Interview with our CTO & Tech team (45 min)

3. Tech Assessment - Onsite at the office (1 hour)

4. Founders interview (45 min)

5. Offer
   

Why Join Valeria Now?

• Timing : We're past the "idea stage" with real customers and revenue, but early enough that you'll define how we scale

• Market opportunity : €5B+ market in Spain, every company with employees needs payroll, and current solutions are outdated and painful

• Product-market fit : We're solving a painful, expensive problem with a product customers actually love

• Career growth : Be a critical product hire, build the playbook, and grow into a leadership role as we scale the team