Staff/Lead Python Engineer (FastAPI, Orchestration)

We’ve achieved strong product-market fit and are now scaling with intention. You’ll join a 45-person team of Senior+ engineers and Product leaders who prioritise product impact over mere headcount. We have 8 cross-functional teams, including a dedicated Platform team focused on infra & developer experience. We started building proprietary ML before the LLM boom, so we don’t just consume models - we train them from the ground up.

Our approach to engineering

• We prioritise customer needs first
• We work in small, project-based teams
• We have flexibility in terms of the problems we work on
• We own the full lifecycle of our projects
• We avoid silos and encourage taking up tasks in new areas
• We balance quality and velocity
• We have a shared responsibility for our production code
• We each set our own routine to maximise our productivity

What Will You Own

In this role, you will own and support the development of backend systems that interface with ML models. You will build apps and core components of our ML systems, deliver new AI features and drive improvements to our infrastructure and services.

We are currently looking for Engineers to join one of our teams:

• Data Intelligence Team, whose goal is to provide ML-enriched data for downstream tasks and ensure user data privacy. You will support our data orchestration and processing pipeline, as we build with scalability in mind.
• Miner Team, whose goal is to enable rapid and accurate labelling and segmentation of data in the Miner product through automation and ML methods. You will support the automation and scalability of the existing ML systems that back up our Miner product.
• Maker Team, a team responsible for building out the automation engine, as one of its founding members. We’re building a new product from scratch, and that means being a part of the design of its architecture, experimentation and development.

In all cases, we’re looking for a Lead/Staff-level engineer to join the Python Chapter, who will have the opportunity to shape our technical direction, architecture, processes, and culture, and to level up the team and Chapter in development practices.

What You Will Be Doing

• Write Python applications that are resilient, robust, and integrate well with other apps in a service architecture.
• Furthering Developer Experience (DevEx) by mentoring others in writing code that is intuitive, clear, and easy to test
• Developing observability for new and existing ML applications and GenAI/LLM integrations, making use of the Grafana Stack (Prometheus, Loki, Tempo)
• Develop integrations and services that communicate with Google Services.
• Working closely with Data Scientists and ML Engineers throughout the lifecycle of productionising their models
• Being responsive to incidents regarding ML applications - including an understanding of how to triage and resolve issues relating to CPU, memory, and GPU utilisation
• Documenting procedures and guides to facilitate knowledge sharing and help other engineers level up through pairing and mentoring

• Participating in hiring and onboarding new team members; taking on end-to-end project management responsibilities as we grow., * Stage 2

  Take-home Challenge (async) + Follow-up (Live) - with Engineering Manager + colleague in an equivalent role

• Stage 3

  System Design (Live) - with Engineering Manager + someone you’d work closely with.

• Stage 4

  Founders/Behavioural Interview - with TL + Co-founder/CTO

• At least 8 years of experience and above as a Software Engineer, and previous Lead/Staff/Principal level of responsibilities.
• Strong proficiency with Python and Backend-Engineering
• Strong experience with async/concurrent programming
• Experience owning projects from start to finish, including speccing, architecture, development, testing, deployment, release and monitoring
• Strong skills in building maintainable tests
• Strong experience with observability and tracing.
• Knowledge of best practices for performance optimisation, memory management.
• Experience mentoring others, especially in good software development practices, patterns, and fundamentals.
• Drive to continually develop your skills, improve team processes and reduce technical debt.
• Fluency in English and ability to effectively communicate abstract ideas, complex concepts and trade-offs.

Nice To Have

• Having been a founding/early member of an Engineering team
• Experience working within a fast-growing Scale-up environment - delivering value quickly and iteratively
• Experience with GCP, * You’re not a Junior or Mid-level engineer. While we value mentoring, coaching, and curiosity, at this stage, we’re looking for Senior+ Engineers to help lay a solid foundation before expanding to junior engineers.
• You use Python, but you’re not familiar with its fundamentals. In this role, we’re looking for people who can set standards, have seen good practices and can explain and defend technical options.
• You don’t have experience with complex architectures. We have a high technical bar, as we’re building with scalability in mind, so this role would not be a good fit if you have a shallow understanding of architecture and networking of data-intensive applications.

This is a fully remote position. You can be based anywhere in the UK, Europe, or the Americas within a UTC-7 to UTC+3 timezone.

What we offer

Generous compensation + stock options - aligned with our internal framework, market data, and individual skills.

Distributed work: Work from anywhere - fully remote, in our hubs, or a mix.

Company-issued laptop, remote setup stipend, and co-working budget

Flexible schedules and location

️ Ample paid time off, in addition to local public holidays

Enhanced parental leave

️ Health & retirement benefits

Annual learning & development budget

Annual workaways and regular virtual & in-person socials

Opportunity to contribute to groundbreaking projects that shape the future of work