Software engineer

Software Engineer

Welcome to Just Russel, a leading D2C European Pet Care brand dedicated to revolutionizing pet care through convenience, preventive health, and data-driven decisions. As the 6th fastest-growing company in Belgium and part of the Deloitte Fast 50, we are driven by our ambition and rapid growth.

We are seeking a Software Engineer who thrives on solving problems end to end and embraces ownership of the solutions. In this role, you will be responsible for designing, building, shipping, and operating reliable software systems that directly contribute to our product goals and business expansion.

Collaboration is key at Just Russel, and you will closely work with Product Engineers, Product Designers, and Data Analysts to transform challenges into practical, scalable technical solutions. Your role goes beyond coding – you will champion quality, maintainability, and the tangible impact of your work on the real world.

If you are passionate about making a difference in the pet care industry and are eager to join a dynamic team that values innovation and excellence, we would love to hear from you!

Product & Engineering Ownership

• Build reliable, scalable and maintainable backend software aligned with product goals

• Own features end-to-end, from design and implementation to deployment, monitoring and iteration

• Work closely with Product and Design to translate requirements into pragmatic technical solutions

• Make thoughtful trade-offs between speed, quality and long-term impact

• Take responsibility for production systems, including monitoring, incidents and continuous improvement

Technical Execution

• Design and implement backend services using Python, Django, FastAPI and PostgreSQL

• Build and maintain well-designed APIs used by frontend and internal services

• Write clean, testable code and actively participate in code reviews

• Improve performance, reliability and data integrity

• Refactor and improve existing systems when needed, applying solid software design principles

Engineering Excellence

• Help improve engineering practices around CI/CD, testing, observability and documentation

• Contribute to shared standards for code quality, architecture and deployments

• Proactively identify technical debt and improvement opportunities

• Share knowledge and help raise the overall engineering bar

Ways of Working

• Work in a cross-functional product team with Product, Design and Data

• Communicate clearly about trade-offs, risks and constraints

• Take ownership while remaining open to feedback and challenge

• Balance autonomy with collaboration in a fast-growing scale-up

Who we’re looking for

You’re a Software Engineer with 2–3 years of professional experience who enjoys owning problems end-to-end and wants to grow in a product-driven engineering environment.

You:

• Have 2–3 years of experience building and running production systems

• Are comfortable with Python and backend development

• Have hands-on experience with Django and/or FastAPI

• Know how to design and consume RESTful APIs

• Have worked with PostgreSQL and care about data quality and performance

• Have some experience with cloud environments (GCP is a plus)

• Are familiar with Git, CI/CD pipelines and automated workflows

• Write structured, readable and testable code

• Have experience with or interest in automated testing (PyTest, TDD/BDD is a plus)

• Can reason about technical trade-offs, even if you’re still growing architecturally

• Enjoy collaborating with Product, Design and Data

• Are pragmatic, curious and comfortable learning by doing

You don’t need to be a senior architect yet. You do need to own your work in production, take responsibility, and care about improving your craft.

Why join Just Russel?

We’re on a mission to change the way people care for pets, through convenience, preventive health and data-driven decisions. Our ambition is to become Europe’s leading D2C Pet Care brand.

As the 6th fastest-growing company in Belgium (Deloitte Fast 50), we’re scaling fast, which means:

• Real technical challenges

• Real ownership

• Real impact 🚀

We live by our A PET HERO values:
Agile, Personal Growth, Entrepreneurial, Team Strength, Honest & Direct, Eager & Engaged, Rational Decisions, One Team

Our offer

• 🛠️ The right tools to do your job, without headaches or drama

• 💻 Professional laptop

• 📱 iPhone with subscription

• 🏥 Healthcare plan (incl. Alan daily care)

• 🥪 Meal vouchers

• 🕛 Flexible working hours and locations, 4-day office rhythm

• 🍏 Fresh fruit (and cookies 🤫)

• 🧑‍🎓 Dedicated budget for learning and development

• 🍺 🎉 🏂 Team drinks, events and activities

📍 This role reports to the Technical Owner and is based in Nevele.