Lead Backend Engineer - Fletchers AI

Hybrid working available – with the flexibility to work from home and collaborate in-office when needed. Most of the current AI team is based near Manchester, Liverpool, or London, and we meet once a month in Manchester. Some of the team meet 1-2 times a week in London and we expect this to grow over the next year.

About Fletchers Solicitors And Our AI Initiative: Every year hundreds of thousands of people are injured and go through a legal claim that is slow, opaque, and stressful, at the point in their lives when they can least absorb it. We are building specialist legal AI tools for Personal Injury to help improve that process. We’re the AI team of Fletchers Solicitors, and we build the tools that support, automate and transform personal injury and clinical negligence law. We’re building systems that run live claims at Fletchers and selling the same tools to other specialist consumer firms across personal injury and clinical negligence. Fletchers is one of the UK’s largest and fastest-growing consumer law firms. We began using machine learning in real legal work back in 2017 and then went on to build what we think was the first dedicated AI team in the sector, which we’re looking to spin out as its own company. That history and setup bring a lot of benefits: the largest pool of domain experts working alongside us, real users and clients, access to real & messy data, and the financial security and funding that comes with private‑equity backing. This AI team operates as a startup within the wider business, reporting to the Director of AI and group CEO, with a mandate to move fast from idea to production. We have a mix of data science, product, engineering, and legal engineering teams, and work alongside lawyers who run cases day‑to‑day. We are going to grow all aspects of the team significantly over the next year as we expand our internal capabilities and commercialise our technology externally, and that growth is starting with engineering.

The Role: This is the lead backend engineering role, reporting into the Director of AI. You’ll own the backend systems, services and infrastructure that enable the development, testing and deployment of our AI tools, and their transformation into marketable products. Alongside hands‑on delivery, you’ll provide technical leadership for the backend team, setting standards, shaping architecture and mentoring other engineers and you’ll lead on doubling that team in the next year. It’s also a forward‑deployed role: as well as building, you’ll work side by side with our internal users and external customer firms to ideate solutions, solve integrations and drive adoption.

Main Responsibilities:

• Design and build the applications and services at the heart of production AI apps.
• Build the systems that deploy, test, and improve those apps while they’re used at scale.
• Build efficient and scalable data integration pipelines from a range of sources (legacy legal case management systems, unstructured Word documents, PDF files, SQL DBs, etc.).
• Own backend architecture across core projects and lead on infrastructure and architecture design decisions, with a strong understanding of the business problem.
• Own infrastructure, site reliability, and disaster recovery for our production systems.
• Work closely with our infra and infosec teams: within their frameworks, advising them and adhering to their requirements, while also constructively challenging and defining our own standards for AI.

People, Leadership And Collaboration:

• Own the software development standards for backend engineering, including how we use AI.
• Review code, manage, and provide technical guidance and mentorship to other engineers and establish best practices across the team.
• Grow the engineering team from 10 to 20+, with the right structures and processes in place to ensure technical excellence as we expand.
• Work side‑by‑side with internal users and engage directly with external customers, across pre‑sale, setup and integrations.
• Collaborate with and maintain close productive relationships with technical and non-technical teams across multiple projects in parallel (product; data science; infrastructure; frontend, as well as legal; nursing, etc.).

Essential Qualifications, Skills And Experience:

• Strong degree qualification(s) in a STEM subject from a top‑tier university.
• Strong professional experience in software development (ideally as a backend engineer/with Python, but we prioritise general technical ability and leadership over specific skills).
• Track record of owning the backend of production systems.
• Experience defining backend architecture, standards, and setting technical direction.
• Experience leading development efforts or acting as a technical lead, including reviewing code and mentoring other engineers.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills that make you comfortable working side by side with users and customers, including in pre‑sale, onboarding, and integration settings.
• Comfortable operating in a fast‑paced environment where requirements may evolve rapidly.
• Based near London or Manchester (although the role can be primarily remote, we anticipate meeting with the whole team twice/month in Manchester, and a local team two or three times/week in a London office).
• Fluency in English.

Desirable Qualifications, Skills And Experience:

• Start‑up experience (building backends and data environments completely from scratch).
• Previous experience with Azure (Container Apps, endpoints, and cloud deployment).
• Experience working with frontend technologies (TypeScript, React, others).
• Prior exposure to NLP, LLMs, and ML tools.
• Experience in professional services domains.

In Return Fletchers Offers:

• 35 hours working week.
• Bonus scheme (subject to targets being met).
• 35 days holiday a year including bank holidays and Christmas Closure, you also have an option to purchase up to 3 extra days’ holiday per year, until you long service award the 3 days after your 5th, 7th, and 9th full year of employment.
• Pension scheme with NI‑efficient salary sacrifice option.
• Life Assurance Policy.
• Medicash policy to cover some dental, optical and other medical expenses.
• Company sick pay.
• Enhanced Maternity, Paternity and IVF schemes.
• Flexible, agile working environment with a positive work‑life balance.
• Varied calendar of funded company social events.
• Monthly voucher awards for winning nominees.
• A genuinely supportive and friendly culture.
• Ongoing training and professional development opportunities.

Office Locations: Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bolton, Southport, Newcastle, Reading, Birmingham, Northampton, Cambridge, Derby, Oxford Nottingham and London.

Fletchers Group is an inclusive employer with a diverse workforce: we welcome applications from any and all backgrounds. We’re committed to providing a culture and environment where everyone can thrive, understanding and celebrating that no colleague is the same. We’re proud of our work on the Disability Confident scheme, signed up to BITC’s Race at Work charter, and working towards Henpicked’s Menopause and Menstrual Friendly accreditations. Fletchers Group is proud to be a Disability Confident Committed scheme member. If you do require any support or reasonable adjustments during the process, please contact us.