Backend Engineer in Barcelona or Remote

Marfeel is a publishing intelligence platform trusted by over 5,000 publishers worldwide: including Business Insider, Le Figaro, El País and McClatchy. We help publishers turn data into action: understanding what content is working right now, what has performed over time, and what to do next. Our platform gives editorial, SEO, audience, and revenue teams a unified view of their business, spanning real-time dashboards and deep historical analysis, all in one place.

Our international team is made up of over 15 different nationalities, with headquarters in Barcelona. Our people and our diversity are at the heart of what we build, and we are still growing.

The role:

We are looking for a Backend Engineer to join a small, high-ownership engineering team working on new product initiatives. You will be primarily focused on new product initiatives, building new services and features, though you may occasionally need to navigate existing codebases. You use AI coding tools as a core part of how you work, and you are excited about what that unlocks. You will own backend architecture decisions and work closely with product and data to ship reliable, high-performance services at scale.

This is what you will do:

• Design, build and maintain backend services using Node.js

• Work with large-scale data systems, including ClickHouse and other relational and non-relational databases

• Build and maintain APIs that power our analytics product, working across real-time and historical datasets

• Ensure services are performant, scalable, and maintainable

• Contribute to architectural decisions for new product features

• Work in an Agile environment with short, focused sprints

• Collaborate closely with product, data and frontend teams

This is you:

• 5+ years of experience building backend services in production environments

• Strong proficiency in Node.js and TypeScript

• Solid experience with relational and non-relational databases (MySQL, MongoDB, ClickHouse or similar columnar databases)

• Deep understanding of API design, data modeling, and web architecture

• Strong focus on performance: you think about query efficiency, latency and scale by default

• You use AI coding tools: Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot or similar, as a natural part of your development workflow, not as an afterthought

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and cloud deployments (Docker, GitHub Actions, Jenkins or similar)

• You enjoy working on complex technical problems and take ownership of your solutions

• Familiar with testing practices including unit, integration and end-to-end testing

We will be impressed by experience in:

• Experience with ClickHouse or other OLAP / columnar databases

• Familiarity with real-time data pipelines or streaming data (Kafka, event ingestion APIs)

• Experience building data-intensive backend services at scale

• Experience designing or working with middleware layers: API gateways, request pipelines, data transformation services or similar

• Knowledge of PHP and/or Java/Spring

• Experience integrating AI tooling into development workflows in a meaningful way: using agents, MCP servers, or AI-assisted development at team level

• Active contributions to open-source projects

This will be you as part of the Marfeel team:

• Work on product that reaches publishers and newsrooms globally

• Option to work full remote, hybrid or office-based (if in BCN area)

• Support with home office equipment

• Flexible hours and early finish on Fridays

• Subsidized health insurance for you and your partner/family (Adeslas)

• Subsidized monthly plan to a large network of health and wellness centers (Wellhub)

• Transport, restaurant and kindergarten tickets (Cobee)

• Free language classes (English/Spanish)

• Open-space, light-filled and eco-conscious office with large sunny terrace (if BCN based)

• Unlimited refreshments including coffee, tea and soft drinks at the office (if BCN based)

• Loyalty vacation days

• Access to training platforms, courses and materials

• Referral bonus for talent brought to us by you

Our interview process:

• Phone call: covering the basics to make sure we are a good fit for each other

• Technical and personal interview: understanding you professionally and personally, and answering all your questions

• Test stage: a preview of the type of work, so you can see us in action too

• Test review interview: we discuss your test and provide feedback