Principal Backend Engineer in London

Hello. We’re Teya. Teya was founded on a simple belief: local businesses deserve better. They are the cafés, restaurants, salons, shops and entrepreneurs that bring character to our high streets, create jobs and keep communities moving. Yet for too long, financial services has made life harder for them - with clunky tools, poor support and complexity that gets in the way of running a business. Teya exists to change that. We’re building a financial platform for local businesses across Europe - one built around simple tools, thoughtful design and real human support. Our Members rely on us to help them run their business with confidence, and that responsibility shapes the way we work. We move fast. We care about quality. We stay close to the detail. And we believe great performance and genuine hospitality should go hand in hand.

If you want to build meaningful products, solve real problems and make a genuine difference for local businesses, we’d love to hear from you.

Your Mission

Small businesses are the backbone of our communities — yet they remain underserved by traditional banks and legacy payment providers. As a Principal Backend Engineer, you will play a defining role in changing that. Your mission is to design and build the resilient, scalable fintech infrastructure that underpins our most critical business initiatives. This isn’t about owning a single service — it’s about owning outcomes. You will drive the technical success of the platforms that power payments, merchant onboarding, transaction processing, and operational workflows across Europe. You’ll operate at the intersection of engineering and business strategy, shaping systems that must be secure, compliant, highly available, and capable of scaling with rapid growth. The decisions you make will directly influence how quickly we can launch new products, enter new markets, and serve thousands of merchants. This role goes beyond technical leadership. You will define and evolve the architectural foundations that multiple teams depend on, bringing clarity to ambiguity and ensuring our most important initiatives succeed.

What You’ll Do

• Own and drive the architecture behind our most critical platforms, ensuring they scale with the business and unlock new capabilities.
• Design and evolve high-scale, cloud-native systems powering payments and merchant experiences.
• Lead the development of resilient, secure, and compliant services for high-volume transaction processing.
• Shape and drive adoption of modern backend practices (Java 17/21, Spring Boot 3, Kotlin, clean architecture).
• Architect event-driven systems (Kafka) that enable scalable, decoupled domains across teams.
• Define and enforce standards for API-first development (REST/gRPC) and domain-driven design (DDD).
• Set the bar for availability, performance, fault tolerance, and observability across critical systems.
• Partner deeply with Product, Data, and leadership to translate business priorities into scalable technical strategy.
• Lead cross-organisational initiatives that are essential to company growth and market expansion.
• Influence engineering direction through hands-on contribution, design leadership, and mentorship.
• Bring structure to ambiguity across technical, regulatory, and operational domains.

What You Bring

• 8+ years of experience building and operating distributed, production-grade backend systems.
• Proven track record operating at Senior Staff or Principal level, driving architecture across multiple teams or domains.
• Deep expertise in Java (17+), Spring Boot, and modern backend engineering practices.
• Strong experience with microservices, event-driven architecture, and asynchronous systems.
• Experience building systems for high throughput, low latency, and reliability, ideally in fintech or transaction-heavy environments.
• Strong grounding in system design, data structures, and performance trade-offs.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, Docker, and Kubernetes in production environments.
• Proven ability to implement observability, resilience patterns, and CI/CD best practices.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence and align stakeholders.
• A track record of mentoring senior engineers and leading through ambiguity.

The Perks

• We trust you, so we offer flexible working hours, as long it suits both you and your team.
• Physical and mental health support through our partnership with GymPass giving free access to over 1,500 gyms in the UK, 1-1 therapy, meditation sessions, digital fitness and nutrition apps.
• Our company offers extended and improved maternity and paternity leave choices, giving employees more flexibility and support.
• Cycle-to-Work Scheme.
• Health and Life Insurance.
• Pension Scheme.
• 25 days of Annual Leave (+ Bank Holidays).
• Office snacks every day.
• Friendly, comfortable and informal office environment in Central London.

Teya is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or background can thrive and do their best work. We believe that a diverse team leads to better ideas, stronger outcomes, and a more supportive workplace for all. If you require any reasonable adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process whether for interviews, assessments, or other parts of the application—we encourage you to let us know. We are committed to ensuring that every candidate has a fair and accessible experience with us.

Location: London

Employment Type: Full time

Department: Engineering