Staff Software Engineer (Python | AI £180k)

Role: Staff Software Engineer

Location: London – Hybrid (2-3 days per week)

Compensation: Up to £180,000 + equity

We're working with a fast-growing technology company transforming a highly traditional global industry through advanced AI and computer vision. Their platform turns complex, real-world environments into rich digital systems, using data to dramatically reduce cost, time, and risk for customers operating at scale.

The product is already live across multiple international markets and is backed by a strong group of institutional investors and industry leaders.

The opportunity: Staff Software Engineer

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.

You should have

• 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.

Why it's exciting

• 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.