Senior Python Backend Engineer — Fully Remote, UK

We’re looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to own the systems that power our products and operations. You’ll lead backend development, shape our cloud infrastructure across AWS and GCP, and make key architectural decisions that influence the future of the platform. This is a fully remote role, open to candidates based in the UK. It offers a high degree of autonomy, influence, and responsibility, ideal for someone who thrives in fast-moving environments and enjoys building from the ground up. The salary range is up to £120,000 depending on experience and fit.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the design, development, and operation of the core backend services that power our consumer-facing products and internal operational tooling.
• Build scalable, low-latency systems that can handle real-time updates and significant traffic spikes during live matchdays, using caching, load management, and graceful degradation techniques.
• Lead the architecture and management of identity and user state, including authentication, profiles, preferences, permissions, and privacy-conscious data handling.
• Develop and maintain our notification platform, including push notifications (APNs/FCM), user notification preferences, audience segmentation, and delivery tracking.
• Integrate with third-party data providers and external services, ensuring robust failure handling, observability, and system resilience.
• Design and support secure internal tooling APIs, including role-based access controls, audit trails, change history, and safe administrative workflows.
• Build and operate event-driven systems using queues, background jobs, and reliable processing patterns, including retries, idempotency, and outbox architectures.
• Partner closely with the data function to implement analytics event collection, maintain event schema integrity, and support downstream data and warehouse requirements.
• Own cloud infrastructure across AWS and GCP, including provisioning, networking, IAM, security, and cost optimisation.
• Manage CI/CD pipelines, deployments, and environment configuration to ensure reliable and efficient software delivery.

What We’re Looking For

• Senior backend experience shipping production systems for high-traffic consumer products, including spiky live-event load.
• Hands‑on AWS experience running and operating real production workloads, not just deploying to it.
• Strong Postgres and SQL skills, including schema design, query tuning, and migrations.
• Strong API design experience, including clear contracts, versioning, and backwards compatibility.
• Python‑first experience, ideally with FastAPI or a similar framework.
• Redis experience, including caching patterns, invalidation, and pub/sub where appropriate.
• CI/CD fluency and comfort operating your own services.

Working Style

This is a fully remote role, and we’re looking for someone who communicates clearly, works independently, and collaborates well across product, data, and client‑side teams. You’ll have the freedom to shape technical direction and the expectation to take real ownership of what you build.