Backend Engineer

VML is a global creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce to create connected brands that drive growth. Guided by a Human First philosophy, VML is known for its innovative work for brands and consistently ranks among the world’s leading creative companies, including the WARC ...

VML is part of WPP, the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands. Powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform WPP Open, WPP unites cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, creativity, production, enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel.

For more information, please visit www.vml.com and follow along on  LinkedIn #WeAreVML.

We're looking for a Backend Engineer to join our team and contribute to our Open Intelligence initiative. This is a pivotal role for an engineer passionate about building robust, scalable, and automated data infrastructure. You will apply core software engineering principles to design, develop, and maintain the foundational systems that power our global media ecosystem.
You'll be instrumental in shaping our data platform, focusing on high-performance data ingestion, processing, and exposure through well-engineered services. This is a hands-on technical role for someone who thrives on solving complex problems, building reliable systems, and leveraging cutting-edge development and automation technologies. You will collaborate closely with team members, product stakeholders, and data scientists to ensure our platform is not only meeting current needs but is also future-proofed and highly performant.
The role is in our lovely Copenhagen offices at Nørrebro, where you will join a larger team of roughly 50 people working on Open Intelligence.
Design, build, and maintain highly scalable and automated data ingestion services and pipelines, leveraging Python and robust web service integrations.
Develop and integrate with external REST APIs using Python to acquire and process diverse data sources, ensuring reliability and performance.
Design, implement, and maintain our cloud infrastructure as code using Terraform to ensure scalable, reproducible, and secure data environments.
Develop and evolve internal web services and APIs to expose data platform capabilities to other engineering teams and applications.
Contribute to identifying performance bottlenecks and optimizing data access, with opportunities to develop critical components in high-performance compiled languages.
Champion and implement best practices for automation, CI/CD, testing, and observability within our data platform.
Contribute to designing and building strong data governance and quality frameworks to ensure services are accurate and work consistently throughout their lifetime.
Stay curious, explore new tools, techniques, and technologies that can help us build smarter, faster, and more performant systems.

3+ years of experience in Backend Engineering/Software Engineering, with a strong focus on building scalable, data-intensive systems or platforms.
Exceptional proficiency in Python for backend development, automation, and data processing.
Proven experience designing, developing, and consuming web services and APIs.
Hands-on expertise with Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and management on cloud platforms.
Demonstrable experience with automation principles, CI/CD pipelines, robust testing methodologies, and version control (Git).
Strong interest in high-performance compiled languages such as Scala, Rust, or Go, and an eagerness to apply these where performance is critical.
Familiarity with adtech- and/or martech data and terminology is a plus.
Strong communication skills — you can effectively explain complex technical concepts to various audiences.
A proactive approach to solving problems and continuously improving systems.