Staff Backend Engineer

Databricks

P-1514 At Databricks, we are passionate about enabling data teams to solve the world's toughest problems — from making the next mode of transportation a reality to accelerating the development of medical breakthroughs. We do this by building and running the world's best data and AI infrastructure platform so our customers can use deep data insights to improve their business. Founded by engineers — and customer obsessed — we leap at every opportunity to tackle technical challenges, from designing next-gen UI/UX for interfacing with data to scaling our services and infrastructure across millions of virtual machines. And we're only getting started. Founded by engineers, Databricks has started a multi-year journey to build the best Lakehouse Platform. For this we are building on top of a great foundation but our goal is to go further to build dramatically better products. We want to revisit every component to provide our customers with the fastest, easiest to use and most secure data platform for all their data workloads. Lakebase enables teams to deliver applications faster with an optimized database developer experience, integration with the lakehouse, and simplified operations. It provides a managed Postgres transactional layer for application state and workloads that combine operational data, analytics, and AI. You'll join as one of the founding engineers to build out both the Lakebase product and our London presence.  Below are some example teams you can join: Lakebase Platform Reliability: Constantly evolving Lakebase Reliability.  That includes cross-functional infrastructure, observability, SLI/SLOs definition and measurements, as well as achieving higher operational efficiency without the need for humans-in-the-loop (both internal and customer-facing), via building AI-powered automation and services Lakebase Manager (LBM): Build and operate the central control plane that owns the core logic for Lakebase — database creation and deletion, wake-up and suspend, maintaining computes on hot standby, HA failover, and more. LBM interacts with every Lakebase component — storage, compute, proxy, and console — managing the full database lifecycle at scale with a focus on reliability. Lakebase Proxy: Build the heart of the Lakebase data path — the network edge that every customer touches. The proxy handles all client connections and transfers every byte of query traffic, serving every data protocol: Postgres, HTTP, WebSockets, and Data API. We route and manage large volumes of concurrent connections, solving load balancing, authentication, and data access at high throughput. We focus on performance, observability, and reliability to ensure the data path is fast and resilient. The impact you will have:  Our backend teams span many domains across our essential service platforms. For instance, you might work on challenges such as: * Problems that span from product to infrastructure including: distributed systems, at-scale service architecture and monitoring, workflow orchestration, and developer experience. * Build reliable, secure and high performance services and client libraries for storing and accessing humongous amount of data on cloud storage backends, e.g., AWS S3, GCS, Azure Blob Store. * Develop product features that empower our customers to easily store and access their data. * Solve reliability problems related to Lakebase. * Actively find causes of downtime and systematically improve or remove root causes. * Help the org define SLIs, meet SLOs, and drive long-term reliability improvements. What we look for: * BS degree (or higher) in Computer Science, or a related field. * 8+ years of production level experience in one of: Java, Scala, C++, or similar language. * Experience developing large-scale distributed systems. * Experience working on a SaaS platform or with Service-Oriented Architectures. * Knowledge of SQL.   About Databricks Databricks is the data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide — including Comcast, Condé Nast, Grammarly, and over 50% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to unify and democratize data, analytics and AI. Databricks is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe and was founded by the original creators of Lakehouse, Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow. To learn more, follow Databricks on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Benefits At Databricks, we strive to provide comprehensive benefits and perks that meet the needs of all of our employees. For specific details on the benefits offered in your region click here. Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion At Databricks, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can excel. We take great care to ensure that our hiring practices are inclusive and meet equal employment opportunity standards. Individuals looking for employment at Databricks are considered without regard to age, color, disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other protected characteristics. Compliance If access to export-controlled technology or source code is required for performance of job duties, it is within Employer's discretion whether to apply for a U.S. government license for such positions, and Employer may decline to proceed with an applicant on this basis alone.

Sparta

We Are Sparta Sparta is the next-generation commodity trading platform. We give trading desks the clarity, control, and collaboration they need to move faster and trade smarter. In February 2025, we secured $42 million in Series B funding. Now we’re scaling up across the business, and it’s an exciting time to join. Our people are the driving force behind everything we do. At Sparta, you’ll be trusted to take ownership, backed by a team who wants you to succeed. You’ll be challenged, supported, and given room to grow. Because building something this ambitious takes everyone at their best. At Sparta, your work has reach. From improving our platform, to powering smarter decisions for our customers, to changing how commodity trading is done around the world. And because we’re growing fast, you won’t just build your career. You’ll accelerate it, with a level of ownership and impact you simply don’t get at bigger, more bureaucratic companies. Staff Data Engineer At Sparta, we're on a mission to build the next generation of commodity trading platforms - replacing the fragmented tools traders depend on with a single, powerful dashboard. Our product is a data-driven platform that aggregates real-time feeds from across the commodities domain, transforming them into intuitive, actionable visualisations within one unified interface. Users can explore pre-built data views or build their own custom formulas - turning raw market data into decisions. At the heart of Sparta is a serious data engineering challenge. We're building a platform that enables the rapid development of reliable, scalable ETL pipelines - the foundation everything else depends on. As our data volumes grow and our product ambitions expand, the demands on that infrastructure grow with them. We're looking for experienced data engineers who are familiar with these challenges at scale — people who understand what it takes to keep a data platform performing as complexity increases. We want people who thrive with ownership. At Sparta, you'll be handed problems, not solutions - and we expect you to run with them. Speed matters, autonomy is real, and we'd rather you move fast and course-correct than wait for permission. As a Staff engineer, you'll also be shaping the direction of the platform itself: engaging directly with stakeholders, contributing to product thinking, and investing meaningfully in the engineers around you. This role can be based in the UK (London) or Spain (Barcelona, Madrid), and we would expect to spend some time together with the team in-office (2 -3 days a week). CORE RESPONSIBILITIES * Play a leading role in the design, build, and ongoing evolution of scalable data pipelines and ETL frameworks that power both real-time and analytical data processing. * Take shared ownership of the health and performance of our data platform - optimising for latency, throughput, and reliability at scale. * Collaborate closely with engineering and cross-functional stakeholders to ensure data infrastructure aligns with product goals and trader-facing outcomes - acting as the connective tissue between data and backend engineering. * Drive architectural decisions across our data platform, with a focus on pipeline reliability, data quality, and scalability. * Contribute to the definition of our target architecture - shaping how we ingest, transform, store, and serve data as the platform evolves. * Mentor and support other engineers through design reviews, technical discussions, and hands-on knowledge sharing. SKILLS & EXPERIENCE * 7+ years of experience as a data or software engineer, with a strong track record of delivering production-quality data systems. * 2+ years working within a product-focused organisation, collaborating closely with cross-functional teams. * Proven experience building and scaling data-intensive pipelines and platforms in production environments. * Deep understanding of stream and batch processing frameworks - hands-on experience with Flink or Spark is essential. * Comfortable working across multiple programming languages - we primarily work with Kotlin, Python, and TypeScript. * Equally comfortable designing high-level architecture as diving deep into low-level implementation details. * Experienced in designing and deploying data infrastructure in cloud environments such as AWS or GCP. * Hands-on experience with core data infrastructure tooling such as Kafka, Redis, and/or clustered Postgres. NICE TO HAVE EXPERIENCE * Familiarity with open lakehouse technologies, such as Apache Iceberg and dbt. * Experience building data infrastructure to support AI agents - including low-latency retrieval and analytical interfaces. * Experience leading teams or managing engineers, driving both delivery and technical excellence. * Exposure to complex distributed environments with demanding constraints such as high throughput, low latency, or large-scale datasets. WORKING STYLE Whereas Sparta is a remote-first company, for this role we’re looking for someone who values a hybrid working style, which in a typical week could involve spending a couple of days in the office - with flexibility built in. Sparta Commodities is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and promotes diversity within its workforce. We are determined that no-one will ever receive less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, race, veteran status or any basis covered by appropriate law.

Teya

Hello. We’re Teya. Teya was founded on a simple belief: local businesses deserve better. They are the cafés, restaurants, salons, shops and entrepreneurs that bring character to our high streets, create jobs and keep communities moving. Yet for too long, financial services has made life harder for them - with clunky tools, poor support and complexity that gets in the way of running a business. Teya exists to change that. We’re building a financial platform for local businesses across Europe - one built around simple tools, thoughtful design and real human support. Our Members rely on us to help them run their business with confidence, and that responsibility shapes the way we work. We move fast. We care about quality. We stay close to the detail. And we believe great performance and genuine hospitality should go hand in hand. If you want to build meaningful products, solve real problems and make a genuine difference for local businesses, we’d love to hear from you YOUR MISSION Small businesses are the backbone of our communities — yet they remain underserved by traditional banks and legacy payment providers. As a Principal Backend Engineer, you will play a defining role in changing that. Your mission is to design and build the resilient, scalable fintech infrastructure that underpins our most critical business initiatives. This isn’t about owning a single service — it’s about owning outcomes. You will drive the technical success of the platforms that power payments, merchant onboarding, transaction processing, and operational workflows across Europe. You’ll operate at the intersection of engineering and business strategy, shaping systems that must be secure, compliant, highly available, and capable of scaling with rapid growth. The decisions you make will directly influence how quickly we can launch new products, enter new markets, and serve thousands of merchants. This role goes beyond technical leadership. You will define and evolve the architectural foundations that multiple teams depend on, bringing clarity to ambiguity and ensuring our most important initiatives succeed. WHAT YOU’LL DO * Own and drive the architecture behind our most critical platforms, ensuring they scale with the business and unlock new capabilities * Design and evolve high-scale, cloud-native systems powering payments and merchant experiences * Lead the development of resilient, secure, and compliant services for high-volume transaction processing * Shape and drive adoption of modern backend practices (Java 17/21, Spring Boot 3, Kotlin, clean architecture) * Architect event-driven systems (Kafka) that enable scalable, decoupled domains across teams * Define and enforce standards for API-first development (REST/gRPC) and domain-driven design (DDD) * Set the bar for availability, performance, fault tolerance, and observability across critical systems * Partner deeply with Product, Data, and leadership to translate business priorities into scalable technical strategy * Lead cross-organisational initiatives that are essential to company growth and market expansion * Influence engineering direction through hands-on contribution, design leadership, and mentorship * Bring structure to ambiguity across technical, regulatory, and operational domains WHAT YOU BRING * 8+ years of experience building and operating distributed, production-grade backend systems * Proven track record operating at Senior Staff or Principal level, driving architecture across multiple teams or domains * Deep expertise in Java (17+), Spring Boot, and modern backend engineering practices * Strong experience with microservices, event-driven architecture, and asynchronous systems * Experience building systems for high throughput, low latency, and reliability, ideally in fintech or transaction-heavy environments * Strong grounding in system design, data structures, and performance trade-offs * Hands-on experience with AWS, Docker, and Kubernetes in production environments * Proven ability to implement observability, resilience patterns, and CI/CD best practices * Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence and align stakeholders * A track record of mentoring senior engineers and leading through ambiguity   The Perks * We trust you, so we offer flexible working hours, as long it suits both you and your team; * Physical and mental health support through our partnership with GymPass giving free access to over 1,500 gyms in the UK, 1-1 therapy, meditation sessions, digital fitness and nutrition apps; * Our company offers extended and improved maternity and paternity leave choices, giving employees more flexibility and support; * Cycle-to-Work Scheme; * Health and Life Insurance; * Pension Scheme; * 25 days of Annual Leave (+ Bank Holidays); * Office snacks every day; * Friendly, comfortable and informal office environment in Central London. Teya is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or background can thrive and do their best work. We believe that a diverse team leads to better ideas, stronger outcomes, and a more supportive workplace for all. If you require any reasonable adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process whether for interviews, assessments, or other parts of the application—we encourage you to let us know. We are committed to ensuring that every candidate has a fair and accessible experience with us.