Staff Backend Engineer

Xapien

About Us Every business needs to know who they’re really working with whether it’s suppliers, investors, partners, or third parties. At Xapien, we’re reinventing how organisations do that, combining speed, scale and accuracy with cutting-edge AI. Since 2018, we’ve grown from a deep-tech startup to a global player in AI-driven due diligence and risk intelligence. 2024 was a landmark year as we closed a $10M Series A, earned recognition in the Chartis RiskTech100® and Everest Group’s Leading 50™, and expanded our products, markets and customer base. 2025 was even bigger: With new regulations, rising compliance pressure and growing reputation risks, organisations everywhere are demanding smarter, faster ways to work and they’re turning to us. Customers worldwide from global law firms and private banks to universities and nonprofits rely on Xapien to turn days of manual research into trusted insights, delivered in minutes. Our momentum so far Customers in a diverse range of industries, with particular growth in wealth management, financial services and supply chain onboarding. Demand accelerating beyond our UK headquarters, across multiple continents with new customers in the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. Why this is an exciting time to join This isn’t just another job role; it’s an opportunity to shape the future of the due diligence industry with a market-leading product trusted by global organisations. Whether you’re in marketing, communications, sales, or finance, you’ll play a critical role in driving growth, building credibility, and defining how we connect our product to a rapidly evolving market. We’re scaling fast with more customers, more releases, and bigger regulatory and market challenges. Expectations are rising, due diligence now means real-time insight, delivered efficiently and with impact. You won’t just be executing campaigns, closing deals, or managing numbers, you’ll be influencing strategy, optimising processes, and helping position a brand that’s setting the new standard for trust and transparency. For people who love learning, innovating, and making an impact that matters now is the moment to be a part of Xapien. THE ROLE We're hiring a Staff Backend Engineer to join our engineering team in a high-impact technical leadership role. You'll work on our most challenging technical problems, own parts of our platform’s architecture, and help shape the technical direction of our backend stack. Our tech stack center’s on Go microservices, with Temporal workflows, MongoDB and ElasticSearch running on Kubernetes in GCP. You'll work with modern patterns including event-driven architectures, gRPC and REST APIs, and comprehensive observability with Grafana Cloud. You'll take technical ownership of major domains within our platform - whether that's our Investigations pipeline (web scraping, data provider integrations, LLM-powered analysis) or our Core App systems (user journeys, features, and configuration). You'll be a technical authority, establishing patterns that others follow and driving initiatives that span multiple teams. WHAT YOU'LL DO * Own the technical direction and architecture for parts of our platform * Design and build complex backend services and systems that scale * Drive technical decisions that affect multiple teams * Establish patterns, standards, and best practices that others will follow * Lead complex technical initiatives from design through implementation * Identify and address systemic technical challenges across our backend * Write exemplary Go code that sets the standard for quality and design * Mentor engineers across the organization, raising the technical bar * Balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery * Influence technology choices and architectural direction * Collaborate with engineering leadership on technical strategy * Build new systems and features while improving our existing architecture WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR ESSENTIAL * 10+ years of professional software engineering experience * Deep expertise in Go, with mastery of concurrency, performance optimization, and advanced patterns * Proven track record of designing and owning large-scale systems * Strong experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, or similar complex systems * Deep understanding of databases, particularly MongoDB or similar NoSQL systems * Extensive experience with microservices architecture and inter-service communication * Expert-level understanding of containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes) * Experience establishing technical standards and patterns across teams * Strong architectural thinking with ability to balance trade-offs * Track record of mentoring and developing other engineers * Ability to drive technical initiatives with minimal guidance * Experience influencing technical direction at an organizational level * Excellent communication skills with ability to articulate complex technical concepts HIGHLY DESIRABLE * Experience with Temporal or similar workflow orchestration systems at scale * Deep knowledge of event streaming platforms like Kafka * Experience with LLMs and AI integration (particularly for Investigations team) * Background in SaaS platforms or B2B products at scale * Expert-level knowledge of observability tools (Grafana, Prometheus, etc.) * Deep understanding of authorization patterns, security, and multi-tenancy * Experience with protobuf and gRPC OUR TECH STACK * Languages: Go * Databases: MongoDB * Messaging & Orchestration: Temporal, Kafka * APIs: REST, gRPC, protobuf * Infrastructure: Kubernetes, GCP * Observability: Grafana stack * AI: LLMs (OpenAI, Gemini), RAG systems WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE In your first 6 months, you will have: * Owned and driven a significant technical initiative to completion * Established new patterns or improved existing ones across teams * Mentored multiple engineers, visibly raising technical standards * Contributed to architectural decisions * Been recognized as a technical authority in your domain * Made measurable improvements to system reliability, performance, or scalability * Influenced the technical direction of our backend platform Here’s our promise to you: * We are going to work with you - to build a rewarding and fulfilling career with the opportunities, challenges and resources you need to do you your best work. * We succeed together- you will own a meaningful part of the business through our employee shares & equity programme. * Private health insurance to keep you in tip-top condition. * Life Insurance – let's hope nobody ever needs this! * Unlimited holidays – yes, it really is uncapped – take the time you need, when you need it. * Everyone is learning, developing and challenging themselves so we have a £1k professional development fund per year if you want to learn new skills, even new things outside of work. * Most importantly of all, we will work with you, to help you realise your fullest potential, always.

Xapien

About Us Every business needs to know who they’re really working with whether it’s suppliers, investors, partners, or third parties. At Xapien, we’re reinventing how organisations do that, combining speed, scale and accuracy with cutting-edge AI. Since 2018, we’ve grown from a deep-tech startup to a global player in AI-driven due diligence and risk intelligence. 2024 was a landmark year as we closed a $10M Series A, earned recognition in the Chartis RiskTech100® and Everest Group’s Leading 50™, and expanded our products, markets and customer base. 2025 was even bigger: With new regulations, rising compliance pressure and growing reputation risks, organisations everywhere are demanding smarter, faster ways to work and they’re turning to us. Customers worldwide from global law firms and private banks to universities and nonprofits rely on Xapien to turn days of manual research into trusted insights, delivered in minutes. Our momentum so far Customers in a diverse range of industries, with particular growth in wealth management, financial services and supply chain onboarding. Demand accelerating beyond our UK headquarters, across multiple continents with new customers in the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. Why this is an exciting time to join This isn’t just another job role; it’s an opportunity to shape the future of the due diligence industry with a market-leading product trusted by global organisations. Whether you’re in marketing, communications, sales, or finance, you’ll play a critical role in driving growth, building credibility, and defining how we connect our product to a rapidly evolving market. We’re scaling fast with more customers, more releases, and bigger regulatory and market challenges. Expectations are rising, due diligence now means real-time insight, delivered efficiently and with impact. You won’t just be executing campaigns, closing deals, or managing numbers, you’ll be influencing strategy, optimising processes, and helping position a brand that’s setting the new standard for trust and transparency. For people who love learning, innovating, and making an impact that matters now is the moment to be a part of Xapien. The Role We're looking for an Engineering Manager to lead one of our engineering teams, managing a group of engineers building features that directly impact our customers. This is a people-first leadership role focused on delivery, team performance, and engineering excellence. As our second EM hire, you'll help us continue to embed effective engineering management practices across the organisation. You'll be responsible for your team's delivery cadence, quality, and growth while working closely with Product, QA, Research, and Design to ship great software. This role is not hands-on coding focused. Instead, you'll spend your time on people development, process improvement, and ensuring your team delivers high-quality work consistently and sustainably. Key Responsibilities People Leadership & Development: * Manage and develop a team of engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and high performance * Conduct regular 1:1s, provide coaching and feedback, and support career growth * Build psychological safety and team cohesion * Support hiring as the team and company scales * Create an environment where engineers can do their best work Delivery & Process: * Own your team's delivery, ensuring consistent, predictable output * Work closely with Product Managers, QA, and Research to scope, prioritise, and deliver work * Drive continuous improvement in delivery cadence and quality * Reduce incidents and improve system reliability * Embed and refine engineering processes that scale with the organisation * Remove blockers and create clarity for the team Technical Engagement: * Participate in technical scoping and design discussions * Understand the technical challenges your team faces well enough to know when to escalate or seek help from senior technical staff * Maintain enough technical awareness to make informed trade-offs between speed and quality * Contribute to architectural discussions without needing to write the code yourself Cross-functional Collaboration: * Partner with Product to align on roadmap and priorities * Collaborate with QA to ensure quality standards * Coordinate with Design on user experience * Communicate effectively with other Engineering Managers and leadership What We're Looking For Essential: * 2+ years of engineering management experience, ideally in a scale-up or high-growth environment * Proven track record of improving team delivery cadence and reducing quality issues * Strong people management skills with experience developing engineers at different career stages * Experience working in cross-functional product teams with Product, Design, and QA * Ability to contribute to technical scoping and design without being hands-on in code * Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills * Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, evolving environment * Track record of building sustainable, healthy teams that deliver consistently Desirable: * Experience in SaaS or B2B product companies * Previous experience as a strong software engineer * Familiarity with modern engineering practices and tooling * Experience hiring and scaling engineering teams What Success Looks Like: In your first 6 months, you will have: * Built strong relationships with your team and cross-functional partners * Improved your team's delivery predictability and cadence * Contributed to reducing incidents and improving quality metrics * Embedded effective processes for planning, retrospectives, and continuous improvement * Supported team members' growth through regular coaching and feedback * Made meaningful progress on at least one significant team improvement initiative Here’s our promise to you: * We are going to work with you - to build a rewarding and fulfilling career with the opportunities, challenges and resources you need to do you your best work. * We succeed together- you will own a meaningful part of the business through our employee shares & equity programme. * Private health insurance to keep you in tip-top condition. * Life Insurance – let's hope nobody ever needs this! * Unlimited holidays – yes, it really is uncapped – take the time you need, when you need it. * Everyone is learning, developing and challenging themselves so we have a £1k professional development fund per year if you want to learn new skills, even new things outside of work. * Most importantly of all, we will work with you, to help you realise your fullest potential, always.

Epidemic Sound AB

Join our global force of 500+ innovators, blending the latest in tech with the greatest in soundtracking, from our Stockholm HQ to offices in London, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Oslo, and Seoul. We’re an industry leader with a startup mentality. We take what we do seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Creating and collaborating to transform the sound of streaming, content, and culture. Come join us— and let the world feel your work. In the Soundtrack product area, we are on a mission to reimagine soundtracking and enable our users to effortlessly create soundscapes that fit perfectly to their content, all seamlessly integrated into their workflows. We are now looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to drive the innovation, scale, and technical direction of the systems that empower millions of creators to elevate their content. About the Role As a Staff Backend Engineer, you will be a strategic technical leader across multiple teams within the Soundtrack area. You’ll play a key role in bringing our mission to life through architectural oversight, hands-on coding, and close collaboration with senior leaders across tech, product, and design. In Soundtrack we are constantly breaking new ground to build the best tools for soundtracking for creators. We serve our AI powered features across a broad range of clients, and our backend capability platform needs to support this advanced product ecosystem in a flexible yet structured way. We solve exciting and complex problems in the intersection of sound, video, software engineering and machine learning, utilizing both agentic workflows and generative AI. You’ll work on a broad range of initiatives, from defining core architectural foundations to driving technical choices that affect our entire backend ecosystem. You’ll lead by example, mentor other engineers, drive platform decisions, and ensure our microservices architecture is robust, scalable, and built for the long term. Responsibilities Set technical direction: Define the backend strategy across the product area, ensuring a scalable and maintainable architecture that aligns with our ambitious product goals. Architect complex systems: Act as a primary partner to engineering and product leads, translating complex business requirements into elegant, performant backend solutions that align with machine learning and frontend requirements. Lead high-impact discovery: Drive early-stage technical discovery for important initiatives, making strategic trade-offs and mapping out execution paths for multiple teams. Raise the engineering bar: Promote backend excellence by championing best practices in API design, system resilience, security, and observability across the organization. Mentor & coach: Inspire and grow technical capabilities across the tech organization, fostering a culture of feedback, mob programming, and continuous learning. Platform strategy: Align backend frameworks, tooling, and conventions across teams to enable fast, safe, and consistent development. What we’re looking for Deep backend skills: You have extensive experience with modern backend technologies, preferably Go (or languages like Kotlin/Python) and a deep understanding of distributed systems and microservices. Architectural vision: A proven track record of leading complex technical projects from initial strategy through to execution at scale. Infrastructure fluency: Deep experience building scalable and reliable software systems. Holistic leadership: You balance hands-on coding with big-picture systems thinking, capable of moving between deep-dives into code and high-level architectural planning. Collaborative mindset: Excellent communication skills with the ability to align diverse stakeholders and thrive in a cross-functional, agile environment. Product mindset: A passion for building high-quality, user-centered software and an understanding of how technical choices impact the end-user experience. It would also be music to our ears if you have experience: building tools for creators or working within a media-heavy environment. working closely with Data Scientists and Machine Learning engineers. with cloud Infrastructure (GCP & K8s). with search systems and Elasticsearch. Equal opportunity employer We believe that bringing people together from different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives makes for a healthy workplace, a more successful business and a better world. We value diversity and encourage everyone to come and soundtrack the world with us. Application Ready to make the world feel your work? Apply now by clicking the link below! We embrace a hybrid model but love collaborating in person, so we spend the majority of our time in the office.