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- Tasks: Lead a 20+ team of backend and devops engineers to drive best practices and deliver key initiatives.
- Company: Muzz is a profitable Consumer Tech startup backed by Y Combinator, based in London.
- Benefits: Enjoy generous PTO, meaningful equity, and international travel with a diverse and welcoming team.
- Why this job: Join a leading app with over 12 million members and work on impactful projects in a fun culture.
- Qualifications: 8+ years in backend engineering, 5+ years leading teams, strong Go experience, and AWS expertise required.
- Other info: Fast hiring process with opportunities for creativity and team bonding activities.
The predicted salary is between 72000 - 108000 £ per year.
We’re looking for an experienced leader to join our engineering leadership team and take charge of all aspects of backend engineering. You’ll be leading a 20+ team of backend and devops engineers to drive best practices and work with our squads on delivering key company initiatives.
As the Head of Backend Engineering, you will be responsible for the whole backend stack here at Muzz, both the day-to-day smooth running and architecting/planning changes for new features.
You will join a 3-person engineering leadership team including the CTO and Head of Mobile Engineering to tackle cross-company initiatives vital to the company’s success.
Responsibilities
- Lead a 20+ team of backend + devops engineers
- Drive best practices in our backend stack through the leads
- Work with our Platform Core squad on improving Developer experience to enable us to release features faster, reduce technical debt and increase developer satisfaction
- Work as part of a 3-person engineering leadership team to uncover issues across engineering, agree on best practices and solve cross-company engineering challenges.
- Help leads within the teams grow and push them to achieve excellence within their area
- Own cross-company initiatives and work with squads to prioritise and deliver
- Be responsible for the uptime and performant running of our entire platform
- Monitor our stack, profile code and optimise code where necessary to reduce resource requirements and cost to run
- Drive efficiency gains reducing the company cloud bill
- Help backend engineers across the company to architect changes to keep things lean and simple
- Stay up to date with new opportunities in the AWS space
- Work with our Data Engineering team to ensure the smooth flow of production data to our data warehouse setup
- Ensure our Incident management process is working well and that we’re learning and growing with every production incident
- Stay hands-on writing and reviewing code where needed to help the team out
Must haves
- 8+ years in Backend engineering
- 5+ years leading engineering teams
- Extensive mentoring experience
- Experience focusing on business outcomes first to quickly make difficult decisions
- Startup experience
- Strong Go experience with a focus on event-driven services and gRPC
- Strong scripting skills (shell, or Python)
- Expertise with building on the cloud AWS services – we use over 40 AWS services
- Knowledge across a wide range of compute options such as ECS, EKS, and Lambda
- IAM – Experience handling IAM resource permissions
- Networking – fundamental understanding of VPC, subnet routing and gateways
- Storage – strong understanding of S3, EBS and Parquet
- Databases – RDS, DynamoDB
- Experience doing cost estimation in Cost Explorer and planning efficiency changes
- Terraform and containerisation experience
- Understanding of a broad range of protocols like HTTP, TCP, gRPC, DNS etc
Nice to haves
- GCP experience
- Advanced EC2 knowledge like spot fleets
- Experience with Amazon Neptune and Athena
- Experience with Kinesis or Kafka
- Experience with payment providers like Stripe, Google Play, Apple App Store
- Previous experience in dating and/or social media space
- Worked in leadership in a fast-scaling business
Why join Muzz?
We’re a profitable Consumer Tech startup, backed by Y Combinator (S17) and based in London. Join our fast-growing team and work on an amazing product that’s changing the world.
A great product
We’re the leading app in this space with over 12 million members worldwide and counting!
A diverse team
We have people from all walks of life adding their unique perspective. Muslims and non-Muslims, cat lovers and dog lovers. Everyone is welcome!
Meaningful equity
We’re all working together to succeed and everyone on the team gets a slice of the pie.
We value curiosity and building something wacky (but useful!). Every quarter we organise into random teams and together we build, code, and prototype. Prizes and dinner complete the day!
International travel
We fly the whole team to somewhere amazing twice a year to connect and have fun.
Mini golf, hikes, super competitive Catan nights – we’ve done it all. Maybe you’ll be at the next social?
Generous Holiday / PTO
All full-time members get at least 33 days of holiday, regardless of where they live.
Our hiring process
We pride ourselves on making fast hiring decisions.
Step 1.
Step 2.
Interview (in person or remote)
Step 3.
Receive an offer!
Join our team
Click the button below to access the application form. Attach your CV and, optionally, a cover letter to apply. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
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Send your application directly to and we’ll make sure it gets to the right place!
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Head of Backend Engineering employer: Muzz
Contact Detail:
Muzz Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Head of Backend Engineering
✨Tip Number 1
Make sure to showcase your leadership experience in backend engineering. Highlight specific instances where you've successfully led teams, driven best practices, and improved developer satisfaction.
✨Tip Number 2
Familiarize yourself with the AWS services mentioned in the job description. Being able to discuss your hands-on experience with these services during the interview will demonstrate your technical expertise and readiness for the role.
✨Tip Number 3
Prepare to discuss your approach to mentoring and developing engineers. The role emphasizes growing leads within the team, so be ready to share examples of how you've helped others achieve excellence.
✨Tip Number 4
Research Muzz's product and its impact on the market. Understanding the company's mission and being able to articulate how your background aligns with their goals will set you apart as a candidate who is genuinely interested in the position.
We think you need these skills to ace Head of Backend Engineering
Some tips for your application 🫡
Tailor Your CV: Make sure your CV highlights your extensive experience in backend engineering and leadership. Focus on your achievements in mentoring, driving best practices, and leading teams, especially in a startup environment.
Craft a Compelling Cover Letter: In your cover letter, express your passion for backend engineering and leadership. Mention specific experiences that align with the responsibilities listed in the job description, such as improving developer experience or managing cross-company initiatives.
Showcase Technical Skills: Clearly outline your technical skills relevant to the role, such as your expertise in Go, AWS services, and containerization. Provide examples of how you've used these skills to achieve business outcomes in previous roles.
Highlight Team Collaboration: Emphasize your experience working within engineering leadership teams. Discuss how you have collaborated with other teams to solve engineering challenges and improve processes, showcasing your ability to drive efficiency and innovation.
How to prepare for a job interview at Muzz
✨Showcase Your Leadership Experience
As a candidate for the Head of Backend Engineering, it's crucial to highlight your leadership experience. Be prepared to discuss specific examples of how you've led teams, mentored engineers, and driven best practices in previous roles.
✨Demonstrate Technical Expertise
Make sure to showcase your technical skills, especially in Go, AWS services, and event-driven architectures. Prepare to discuss your hands-on experience with backend technologies and how you've optimized systems for performance and cost efficiency.
✨Align with Company Values
Familiarize yourself with Muzz's mission and values. During the interview, express how your personal values align with theirs, particularly around diversity, curiosity, and building innovative solutions.
✨Prepare for Cross-Company Collaboration Questions
Since the role involves working closely with other engineering leads, be ready to discuss your experience in cross-functional collaboration. Share examples of how you've tackled engineering challenges and improved processes across teams.
