Staff Software Engineer (Provenance) in London
Staff Software Engineer (Provenance)

Staff Software Engineer (Provenance) in London

London Full-Time 70000 - 90000 £ / year (est.) Home office (partial)
Cloudsmith

At a Glance

  • Tasks: Design and build innovative software solutions for Cloudsmith's provenance platform.
  • Company: Join a dynamic tech startup focused on revolutionising software supply chains.
  • Benefits: Enjoy competitive pay, equity options, health benefits, and flexible working arrangements.
  • Other info: Collaborative environment with opportunities for personal growth and professional development.
  • Why this job: Make a real impact in a fast-growing company while developing your skills.
  • Qualifications: 5+ years in backend engineering with strong Python skills and cloud experience.

The predicted salary is between 70000 - 90000 £ per year.

We are looking for an engineer to help build a new generation of provenance and build information into the Cloudsmith platform. If you are motivated by solving problems of performance at a massive scale and passionate about your craft, you will find an environment in which you can thrive at Cloudsmith.

A Staff Software Engineer on the Supply Chain Trust team, you will play a key role in building platform capability that gives enterprise customers complete, end-to-end traceability from source code to built artifact. Not just where an artifact came from, but how it was built, what went into it, and exactly how it was used across every pipeline and deployment downstream.

Cloudsmith already sits in the middle of how organisations store and distribute software artifacts. This role turns that position into something more powerful: a source of truth. You will build the infrastructure that captures, stores, and surfaces build provenance and pipeline usage data — so that when a customer asks which of their services consumed a given artifact, and what build produced it, the answer is in Cloudsmith, complete and trustworthy.

Our Team consists of four teams responsible for building application capabilities and the underlying platform upon which Cloudsmith is founded. We operate in a highly collaborative environment, where people with different skills come together to make things happen. We each contribute to an environment where curiosity, support, transparency, and bias for action reign. We have a modern CI/CD approach, deploying multiple times per day, and we support a global set of customers who are engineers like us.

Key Responsibilities

  • Build: Design, implement, and ship the provenance ingestion service — capable of accepting provenance and attestation payloads from CI/CD systems, public registries, signed bundles, and customer-uploaded artifacts across a wide range of formats (SLSA, in-toto, SBOM attestations, Sigstore bundles etc).
  • Store: Own the storage architecture for signed provenance metadata.
  • Validate: Build the validation engine that verifies cryptographic integrity and evaluates attestation data against configurable customer trust policies — SLSA level requirements, allowed builder identities, key material, and more.
  • Expose: Deliver clean, well-documented APIs that make provenance data useful to customers and to other parts of the platform — queryable, auditable, and reliable.
  • Collaborate: Work closely with product, customer success, and the wider engineering team to understand how enterprise security teams consume provenance data and translate that into features they love.
  • Quality: Prioritise correctness, security, and observability — this is critical infrastructure customers trust with their software supply chain decisions.
  • Mentor: Share your expertise across the team through code reviews, documentation, and open conversation — a rising tide lifts all boats.

Required Experience, Qualities & Skills

We realise that not everyone will have every experience and expertise in every possible thing. Still, if you have many of the following, we might be a great place to progress your career.

  • Domain Knowledge
  • Provenance & Attestation: You know the landscape: SLSA, in-toto, Sigstore, DSSE, and how attestations are packaged and signed. You do not need to have built signing pipelines, but you must understand their output.
  • Cryptographic Foundations: Comfortable with signing and verification: key material, ECDSA/RSA, certificate chains, OIDC-based keyless signing flows, and transparency logs.
  • SBOM Formats: Familiarity with CycloneDX and SPDX, and how they are packaged as attestation artifacts.
  • Backend & Platform Engineering Experience: 5+ years of production backend engineering, with real ownership of at least one complex service end-to-end.
  • Technical Proficiency: Strong experience with Python for building backend services and data pipelines. Familiarity with AWS services (e.g. S3, RDS/Postgres, Kinesis, ECS, Lambda) and infrastructure tooling (Terraform).
  • Data Ingestion: Experience designing pipelines that handle varied, schema-evolving, high-volume payloads reliably and at scale — including robust error handling and observability.
  • Data Modelling: Ability to design storage schemas that efficiently represent signed metadata envelopes, artefact graphs, and queryable relationships.
  • API Design: Experience building and versioning APIs consumed by external enterprise customers or third-party integrators.
  • Multi‑Tenant Systems: You have built or operated multi-tenant SaaS platforms and understand what data isolation, access control, and audit logging actually require in practice.
  • Iterative Delivery: You understand the importance of shipping early and often and are comfortable making real-world trade-offs between a perfect design and getting something valuable in front of customers.
  • Communication: You are enthusiastic and effective communicator who can bridge the gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Mindset: You are deeply passionate about your craft, eager to learn, and comfortable admitting what you don't yet know.
  • Benefits, Location & Work Environment

    You must be based in Ireland or the United Kingdom and have the right to work independently without requiring sponsorship.

    • A competitive compensation package, including equity.
    • Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
    • Generous annual leave and flexible working policies to suit your lifestyle.
    • A professional development budget for conferences and training.
    • A dynamic, innovative, trust‑centric, and supportive work environment.
    • The opportunity to shape a fast‑growing Series B startup (and beyond).
    • Regular (monthly-ish) travel may be required for team meetings.
    • Regular (quarterly-ish) travel may also be required for events and customers.

    Health and Wellness

    Regardless of your location, we deeply care about the health and wellness of our staff and their families; a sustainable pace is important to us. In addition to generous annual leave (PTO), we offer health and well‑being benefits along with flexible family‑friendly working policies.

    Personal Growth

    You will have an enormous opportunity to learn new skills alongside your colleagues, and your continued professional development is essential to us because it's important to you. We will support you with budgets for equipment, training, books, conferences, travel, and certifications. The more powerful you become, the better for all of us.

    Facilities

    Cloudsmith is headquartered in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with fully‑equipped office space that’s open 24x7. We use our H.Q. regularly for activities like working sessions, team planning, meets and greets, and sometimes other group activities (like games!). We also hold all‑hands off‑sites in Belfast twice a year, featuring guest speakers and team activities. Many Cloudsmithers work remotely, so we rely on our online collaboration tools; Slack, Google Docs, Linear, and other popular collaboration tools are how we work.

    About Equal Opportunity

    Cloudsmith is an equal‑opportunity employer proud to nurture a diverse workplace that welcomes applications from individuals of all races, genders, and ethnic groups. We do not discriminate on age, religion, sexual orientation, citizenship status, military service, or health conditions. We will not tolerate discrimination of any kind within our workforce.

    The Final Word

    We’re looking for someone who has a passion for their craft, a collaborative attitude, and a desire to build a product customers love. We are critical infrastructure built by developers for developers, and we are building the world’s software supply chain platform and ecosystem. We want to hear from you if you are excited to build the edge networking layer that powers software delivery at a global scale—balancing thoughtful design with real‑world constraints—to leave a lasting impact on the software industry from today until IPO and beyond.

    Staff Software Engineer (Provenance) in London employer: Cloudsmith

    At Cloudsmith, we pride ourselves on being an exceptional employer, offering a dynamic and innovative work environment that fosters collaboration and personal growth. With a competitive compensation package, comprehensive health benefits, and a strong emphasis on professional development, our team members thrive in a culture that values curiosity, support, and transparency. Located in Belfast, Northern Ireland, we provide flexible working policies and the opportunity to shape a fast-growing startup, making it an ideal place for passionate engineers looking to make a meaningful impact.
    Cloudsmith

    Contact Detail:

    Cloudsmith Recruiting Team

    StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫

    We think this is how you could land Staff Software Engineer (Provenance) in London

    ✨Tip Number 1

    Network like a pro! Reach out to folks in your industry on LinkedIn or at meetups. A friendly chat can open doors that a CV just can't.

    ✨Tip Number 2

    Show off your skills! Create a portfolio or GitHub repo showcasing your projects. This gives potential employers a taste of what you can do beyond the written word.

    ✨Tip Number 3

    Prepare for interviews by practising common questions and coding challenges. We all know that confidence is key, so get comfortable with your answers!

    ✨Tip Number 4

    Apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen. Plus, we love seeing candidates who are genuinely interested in joining us at Cloudsmith.

    We think you need these skills to ace Staff Software Engineer (Provenance) in London

    Provenance & Attestation knowledge
    Cryptographic Foundations
    SBOM Formats familiarity
    Backend Engineering experience
    Python programming
    AWS services familiarity
    Data Ingestion design
    Data Modelling
    API Design
    Multi-Tenant Systems experience
    Iterative Delivery mindset
    Effective Communication skills
    Collaborative attitude
    Problem-Solving skills

    Some tips for your application 🫡

    Tailor Your Application: Make sure to customise your CV and cover letter for the Staff Software Engineer role. Highlight your experience with provenance, attestation, and backend engineering, as these are key areas for us at Cloudsmith.

    Showcase Your Passion: We love seeing candidates who are genuinely excited about their craft. Share examples of projects or challenges you've tackled that demonstrate your enthusiasm for software engineering and problem-solving at scale.

    Be Clear and Concise: When writing your application, keep it straightforward. Use clear language to explain your skills and experiences, making it easy for us to see how you fit into our team and the role.

    Apply Through Our Website: We encourage you to submit your application directly through our website. This helps us streamline the process and ensures your application gets the attention it deserves!

    How to prepare for a job interview at Cloudsmith

    ✨Know Your Stuff

    Make sure you brush up on your knowledge of provenance and attestation, especially SLSA, in-toto, and Sigstore. Being able to discuss these concepts confidently will show that you're not just familiar with the terms but understand their practical applications.

    ✨Showcase Your Experience

    Prepare to talk about your past projects, particularly those involving backend engineering and data ingestion. Highlight specific challenges you faced and how you overcame them, especially in high-volume environments. This will demonstrate your problem-solving skills and technical proficiency.

    ✨Communicate Clearly

    Practice explaining complex technical concepts in simple terms. You'll likely need to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders, so being an effective communicator is key. Consider doing mock interviews with a friend to refine your delivery.

    ✨Ask Insightful Questions

    Prepare thoughtful questions about Cloudsmith's current projects and future goals. This shows your genuine interest in the role and helps you assess if the company culture aligns with your values, especially around collaboration and innovation.

    Staff Software Engineer (Provenance) in London
    Cloudsmith
    Location: London

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