Staff/Senior Staff Backend Engineer in London

About Sava

All the health information we need is within us. Just below the skin. SAVA is redefining the way people interact with their health by developing the most advanced biosensing technology science has to offer, capable of accessing bodily information in a painless, real-time and affordable way.

The Role

This is a broad role that spans areas such as backend architecture & implementation within the Data Engineering team at Sava. It presents the unique opportunity to work on the early stages of customer-facing production infrastructure development, influencing key technical decisions and shaping the backend architecture which will ultimately help us to design, build, and scale the backbone of our device. This is an exciting chance to work in a multidisciplinary environment at a highly vertically integrated company alongside engineers and scientists from a whole host of diverse backgrounds. We need someone who can translate complex requirements into elegant, scalable systems, make high-impact technical decisions, and influence how Sava’s infrastructure evolves as we move from prototype to product.

What You'll Do

• Design & implement backend architectures, APIs, applications, services and databases to support both production & developmental needs
• Automated testing of backend infrastructure
• Contribute to high performance software development processes that balance performance, reliability and security
• Champion best practices
• Translate higher level system requirements into concrete, technical design solutions

What We're Looking For

• 5-10y (or more) experience with production backends
• Experience with strongly typed languages
• Experience with common database approaches - relational, non-relational
• Modern deployment strategies
• Intimate knowledge of internet networking concepts, protocols, servers, instances, CDNs etc.
• Fluent with setting up development servers from scratch when required, on premise or on cloud.
• Containerisation
• Public Key Infrastructure
• Relentless pursuit of elegant interfaces that encapsulate complexity and facilitate building loosely coupled systems
• Emphasis on rapid scalability of solutions (consider market ramp up when entering a new market)
• Model Based Engineering approach, such as Data Model Design or UML
• Relentless pursuit of system security: ability to don red team and blue team hats, knowledge of CVE & CWEs, encryption, authentication & authorisation, lean into security landscape changes
• Flexibility with tools & tech stacks & open to learning new ones. Taking an approach that there is no ‘one right tool’, but rather the right tool for the project at hand.
• Ability to work & communicate across disciplines. Ability to translate concepts using analogies where possible. Disciplines you’ll be working closely with include Data Science, Mobile Engineering, Embedded Software through to other fringe disciplines like Manufacturing, Electronics, Sensor Development, and Mechanical Engineering.
• Focus on System Observability through automatically tracked ‘gold layer’ performance metrics alongside error diagnostics.

Bonus Points For

• Experience in a regulated industry (e.g. Banking, Medical)
• Experience with Data Residency requirements
• Knowledge of SOC2, ISO 27001 frameworks
• Experience with development compliant to IEC62304

Why Sava?

This is a high-ownership, high-responsibility role in a company that’s building something complex, meaningful, and fast. The expectations are high, the learning curve is steep, and the work is often messy—but the impact is real. We don’t have room for egos or passengers. What we do have is a team of thoughtful, driven, and mission-aligned people who are committed to building something better—and doing it with urgency and integrity.