Lead Backend Engineer

ALFA TECHNOLOGY RECRUITMENT LTD
Sutton, UK
2 days ago
Apply on www.adzuna.co.uk
Prepare application

Role details

Contract type
Permanent contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Experience level
Expert
Compensation
£49,000.0 - £89,000.0
Working hours
Regular working hours

Tech stack

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) Artificial Intelligence Amazon Web Services Cloud Computing Entity Framework Python (Programming Language) Next.js TypeScript State Machines Backend Fastapi

Job description

  • We architect the platform that runs home life.
  • We design the architecture for households, properties, partners, suppliers, and how they relate.
  • We build state machines that every order runs on, clear enough for an agent to act on.
  • We define contracts between domains, data, queues, and infrastructure.
  • We design for speed and reliability, including sub-second reads for live voice.
  • We ship observability with the feature, rehearse rollbacks every release, and make small changes to production daily.
  • We move live systems onto a modern stack without dropping anything.
  • We make agents first-class customers with permissioned access to read and act, idempotency, audit trails, and controls around money.
  • We use config over code so commercial teams can change pricing without a deploy.
  • We own the outcome end to end and clear whatever stands between us and it.
  • We raise the standard across the team and help make work more joyful.
  • We set the engineering practice from planning to evals.

Technologies:

  • AI
  • API
  • AWS
  • Architect
  • Backend
  • Claude Code
  • FastAPI
  • Python
  • TypeScript
  • Cloud, We are building Jay, a personal AI that takes the admin out of moving and home life, then keeps the household running by setting up and managing services such as energy, broadband, water, council tax, insurance, renewals, and deals. We plug into the property industry and hundreds of suppliers, with one entity model and one API that turn a move into services set up, switched, and paid for. We are UK first, then global, operating in a $1T home services market with 4M home movers a year in the UK and 28M UK households to serve. We are a B Corp and FCA regulated, and we care deeply about customers, reflected in 4.9 ratings on Trustpilot and Google. The stack includes TypeScript on the backend, Python and FastAPI for Jay, Next.js up front, AWS underneath, and Claude Code woven through how we build. We are based in London, with a few days a week in the office. Compensation includes competitive cash plus equity, and we work hard with generally strong work-life balance. The role reports to the Head of AI and Engineering.

Requirements

  • We are looking for a truly world-class engineer who has seen what great looks like and can take ownership to build the foundations for a global agentic marketplace.
  • You are a systems thinker first, understanding how the parts interact, where failure hides, and what breaks at ten times the volume.
  • You have architected real systems end to end, more than once, and run them in production at the scale of millions of users.
  • You take the edges seriously, including retries, idempotency, backpressure, and duplicate messages.
  • You are AI-native at the frontier and help set the practice for the team, from planning to evals.
  • You are strong in TypeScript and productive in whatever a problem needs within days.
  • You are happiest thinking out loud with the team.
  • UK right to work is required.
  • Bonus points if you have led a team or worked in UK property or utilities.
  • Bonus points if you have moved house in the UK and understand the problem firsthand.

Apply for this position

This job is hosted externally. Click below to view the full posting and apply.

Apply on www.adzuna.co.uk
Prepare application

Good distractions

Talks and stories from around this role — technically off-topic, practically not.

1:55 min

Hiring backend developers with strong cultural fit

Stefan Lingler Stefan Lingler +1 · Coffee With Developers

1:52 min

Structuring and scaling the backend engineering team

Stefan Lingler Stefan Lingler +1 · Coffee With Developers

4:30 min

Scaffolding pages and routing single-page applications with Next.js

Josh Goldberg · JS Congress

3:33 min

Connecting frontends via a FastAPI proxy backend layer

Saoussen Chaabnia Saoussen Chaabnia · Europe 2026 Virtual

1:38 min

Transitioning into backend engineering from web development

Stefan Lingler Stefan Lingler +1 · Coffee With Developers

1:31 min

Introduction to the GraphQL, Apollo, and Next.js stack

Josh Goldberg · JS Congress

Videos

See all

Related articles

See all