(Senior or Staff) Backend Engineer, AI tooling

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Staff Backend Engineer, AI Tooling based in United Kingdom. This is a high-impact engineering role focused on building the platforms, tooling, and AI-powered capabilities that help engineering teams move faster without compromising quality. You’ll own complex technical initiatives end to end, from architecture and implementation through production operations and long-term evolution. Your work will shape developer productivity, CI/CD, testing, observability, engineering insights, and AI-assisted development practices across the organization. You’ll operate with significant autonomy, leading multi-quarter projects and turning complex technical challenges into measurable outcomes. You’ll work closely with engineering leadership to influence technical strategy, challenge assumptions, and define the roadmap for your area. The role combines hands-on backend engineering with technical leadership, mentorship, and ownership of systems used by other engineers every day. It’s an opportunity to have a broad technical footprint while helping define how modern, AI-enabled software engineering teams operate. Accountabilities - Own the architecture, development, deployment, and long-term evolution of developer platform and AI tooling capabilities. - Lead multi-quarter technical projects, breaking complex initiatives into clear milestones and delivering measurable improvements iteratively. - Build and operate systems covering developer productivity, CI/CD, observability and engineering metrics, code quality automation, testing infrastructure, and AI-assisted development. - Lead the adoption and effective use of AI-powered developer tools and capabilities across engineering teams.

- Define technical direction for your area, anticipating longer-term challenges and developing scalable solutions and engineering capabilities. - Partner with engineering leadership on roadmap and technical strategy, providing technical recommendations, challenging requirements where appropriate, and identifying alternative approaches. - Mentor engineers through design collaboration, code reviews, technical guidance, and strong engineering practices. - Take ownership of the operational health of systems, using data and feedback to guide improvements, maintenance, iteration, and deprecation. - Ensure integrations with third-party APIs, SaaS products, and external platforms are reliable, secure, maintainable, and provide a strong developer experience. Requirements: - 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 2–3+ years operating at Senior or Staff level. - Strong hands-on experience building and operating developer platforms, developer tooling, CI/CD systems, observability or metrics infrastructure, code quality automation, testing infrastructure, or related engineering systems. - Demonstrated experience delivering infrastructure or tooling that measurably improves developer velocity, productivity, quality, or reduces engineering complexity. - Previous experience leading the adoption of AI-powered developer tools or capabilities across an engineering organization. - Experience working within a high-performing engineering environment, such as a scale-up or established technology organization, with a strong understanding of how infrastructure decisions affect developer productivity and product quality. - Experience integrating third-party services, APIs, SaaS tools, or external platforms into internal systems, with strong attention to reliability, security, maintainability, and user experience. - Strong understanding of how platform and infrastructure investments enable broader product and commercial outcomes. - Experience owning significant technical areas end to end, including architecture, implementation, operations, and continuous improvement.