Staff Software Engineer (Python | AI £180k)

This is a rare opportunity to join a small, high-calibre engineering group as a founding member of a newly established London R&D team. You won't just be joining an existing organisation - you'll help define how the team operates, what it builds, and how it scales.

What you'll do

• Design, build, and scale core backend systems and data pipelines that process large volumes of real-world data.
• Architect highly reliable, high-performance cloud systems operating in production environments globally.
• Work hands-on with diverse and complex data types, integrating advanced data processing and computer vision workflows.
• Own backend architecture decisions that directly impact product quality, scalability, and commercial success.
• Write clean, testable, well-observed code with a strong focus on reliability, monitoring, and performance.
• Collaborate closely with other senior engineers to establish best practices for a growing R&D organisation.

• Significant experience as a backend engineer, operating at senior or staff level.
• Strong Python expertise and comfort building production-grade systems.
• Deep experience designing and operating large-scale, distributed backend systems.
• A track record of working on performance-critical, data-intensive applications.
• Comfort operating in fast-moving environments where architectural decisions have wide-reaching impact.
• Strong collaboration skills and experience working in small, high-ownership teams.

Tech stack & environment

• Python-first backend development.
• Cloud-native infrastructure (AWS preferred).
• Containerisation and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Message queues and streaming systems (e.g. Kafka, SQS, RabbitMQ).
• Relational and/or NoSQL databases.
• CI/CD pipelines, observability, monitoring, and logging as first-class concerns.
• Exposure to computer vision, 3D data, or similar domains is a strong plus, but not required.

• Be a founding engineer in a newly formed R&D team with real influence over direction and culture.
• Work on technically complex problems with clear real-world impact.
• Build systems that operate at scale, across global, production environments.
• High trust, high ownership, and the opportunity to shape both technology and organisation.
• Strong backing, real product traction, and a long runway for growth.

If you're excited by the idea of building and scaling deeply technical backend systems, shaping a new engineering team, and solving complex real-world problems at scale, we'd love to hear from you.