Staff Backend Engineer

Staff Backend Engineer - Up to £180,000 base plus bonus, plus equity - London We’re working with a rapidly growing AI company valued at $10 billion+, with a team of 500+ employees. The company is at the forefront of the AI industry, developing advanced AI technology and products with significant real-world impact. With substantial growth ahead, the engineering organisation is expanding and looking for exceptional technical leaders to help shape the next stage of the company’s technology. We’re looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to help define the architecture, technical direction, and engineering standards across the platform. This is a senior technical leadership role for someone who enjoys solving complex problems, working across teams, and turning ambiguity into scalable, maintainable solutions. You’ll remain hands-on while influencing architecture and engineering decisions across the organisation. What You’ll Do Design and evolve scalable backend systems and distributed services.Lead complex, cross-team technical initiatives from design through production.Drive improvements in scalability, reliability, performance, security, and maintainability.Establish engineering standards, architectural patterns, and best practices.Partner with product and engineering leadership on technical strategy and long-term planning.Review system designs, APIs, data models, and implementation approaches.Mentor senior engineers and help develop technical leadership across the organisation.Improve engineering practices, observability, testing, and operational excellence.Contribute hands-on code and technical solutions where they have the greatest impact. What You Bring Significant experience building and operating production backend systems at scale.Strong expertise in Golang or another modern backend language.Deep understanding of distributed systems, concurrency, APIs, databases, and cloud infrastructure.Proven experience leading complex technical initiatives across multiple teams.Strong system-design skills and sound architectural judgement.Experience with high-throughput, low-latency, and highly reliable systems.Ability to influence technical decisions through strong communication and engineering judgement.Experience mentoring senior engineers and developing technical talent.A pragmatic approach to balancing technical quality, delivery, and business needs. Location & Eligibility Applicants must have permanent right to work in the UK, as visa sponsorship is not available. Candidates should be based in or within a commutable distance of London and able to attend the office when required. (You are probably looking at once every 2-3 weeks onsite but its remote first)