Senior Engineer in London

About Us

Openr is transforming how the hospitality industry manages and shares data. By centralising recipe, product, and pricing information, we help hospitality businesses seamlessly connect to platforms like Deliveroo and Just Eat, as well as EPOS and other customer touch points. We’ve recently closed a significant funding round and are backed by Azzurri Group, one of the UK’s most successful hospitality investment platforms. With strong market traction, we’re now looking for a Principal Engineer.

About the Role

We’re looking for a senior backend focused engineer to join our engineering team. This is a hands‑on role where you’ll be designing and building the systems that power our platform, while helping set the technical direction for how we grow. You’ll be a go‑to person for architectural decisions and a mentor to engineers around you. We’re after someone who’s as comfortable pairing with a junior developer as they are making calls on system design. We invest heavily in each other’s development here, and that applies at every level.

What You’ll Be Working With

Our backend runs on AWS Lambda, TypeScript, Node.js, and PostgreSQL, with infrastructure managed in AWS. On the frontend we use TypeScript, React, and React Query. While this role is firmly backend focused, having a working understanding of the frontend helps when collaborating across the stack. You don’t need to have used every one of these technologies before. What matters most is that you’re an experienced engineer who picks things up quickly and enjoys getting stuck into new problems.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Technical Leadership: You’ll play a key role in shaping how we build things. That means owning architectural decisions, identifying the right trade‑offs between speed and sustainability, and making sure our systems are reliable and performant. You’ll contribute to our product roadmap from a technical perspective and help the team navigate complex dependencies and risks.
• Building: This isn’t a role where you stop writing code. You’ll be hands‑on daily, delivering high‑quality backend solutions, improving our development workflows, and tackling the harder problems that come with a growing platform.
• Growing the Team: You’ll mentor engineers across the team, helping them develop their skills and confidence. You’ll also be involved in recruitment, from screening candidates and reviewing code challenges to helping shape how we onboard new joiners.
• Communicating: You’ll regularly translate technical concepts for non‑technical stakeholders. Being able to explain the "why" behind decisions clearly and calmly is a big part of this role.

What We’re Looking For

• You’re an experienced backend engineer who’s confident designing and building systems in production.
• You have strong experience with TypeScript, Node.js, SQL, and relational databases.
• You’ve worked with cloud infrastructure, ideally AWS and serverless architectures.
• You’ve led the delivery of complex technical projects and know how to bring others along with you.
• You think carefully about system design, making pragmatic choices that balance quality with pace.
• You communicate well and enjoy working with people across different disciplines.

Nice to have, but not essential (we’re happy to support you in growing into these):

• Experience building or scaling SaaS products.
• Familiarity with event‑driven architectures.
• Background working with integration‑heavy platforms.
• An interest in security best practices.

What We Offer

• Flexible hybrid working. Two days a week in our Central London office in Farringdon, the rest from wherever works for you. No out‑of‑hours support. We believe great work happens when people have balance.
• Real influence. You’ll have direct input into architectural decisions and the technical direction of a growing SaaS platform. This isn’t a role where decisions are made above you.
• A learning culture. Dedicated time and support for developing new skills, working with modern cloud‑native technologies.
• A collaborative team. We genuinely enjoy working together and supporting each other’s growth.

Benefits

• 25 days holiday per year plus Bank Holidays.
• Life Assurance (4x salary).
• Income Protection (75% salary after 26 weeks).
• Access to WeCare Employee Assistance Programme.
• Cycle to Work Scheme.
• Annual eyecare voucher with Specsavers.
• Wrkit Savings & Benefits platform.

We encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. If you’re excited about this role but don’t tick every box, we’d still love to hear from you. Curiosity and a desire to learn matter more to us than a perfect checklist.