At a Glance
- Tasks: Design and optimise backend services for AI-powered financial workflows.
- Company: Join Translucent, a cutting-edge startup revolutionising accounting with AI.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, equity stake, and remote work flexibility.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in a fast-paced environment while shaping the future of finance.
- Qualifications: 5+ years in backend engineering with strong SQL and programming skills.
- Other info: Collaborative culture with opportunities to influence product direction.
The predicted salary is between 36000 - 60000 ÂŁ per year.
Compensation:
Competitive salary + meaningful equity stake.
About Translucent
Translucent is building the future of accounting with AI. We are reimagining how companies handle their finances by making AI a trusted teammate for finance teams: safe, transparent, and always with humans in control.
We are not starting from zero. Our platform already processes Xero and QuickBooks data at the transaction level for thousands of companies across multiple entities. Customers rely daily on our consolidation, intercompany, and search tools – and their feedback drives our roadmap.
We are a small, fast-moving team with high standards and big ambitions. If you enjoy working close to customers, shipping quickly, and building something truly different, you’ll fit right in.
Role overview
We are looking for an experienced Backend Engineer who loves working with data, building robust services, and optimising distributed systems. You will work across ingestion pipelines, API layers, and query engines, shaping how our platform stores, processes, and serves financial data.
This is a hands‑on role where you will make architectural decisions, solve scaling challenges, and design backend systems that form the foundation for AI‑powered financial workflows.
What you will do
- Design, implement, and optimise backend services that power our APIs, integrations, and developer tools.
- Own database performance and reliability: schema design, indexing, query optimisation, and scaling strategies for PostgreSQL and ClickHouse.
- Build and maintain high-throughput ingestion pipelines with Kafka, transforming raw accounting data into well-structured, queryable formats.
- Develop data access APIs that make financial data securely and efficiently available to both internal services and external developers.
- Improve observability across the stack: logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting for ingestion pipelines and backend services.
- Collaborate with engineers, product, and domain experts to turn customer workflows into reliable backend systems.
- Contribute to architectural decisions across event‑driven workflows, sync/transform services, indexing strategies, and search infrastructure.
- Support AI-powered workflows by ensuring data pipelines are structured, reliable, and optimised for retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), schema validation, and downstream agent evaluation.
- Help design guardrails and evaluation hooks for systems where agents or customers write data back, ensuring correctness, performance, and safety.
- Explore new data architectures such as graph databases to model complex financial relationships and support emerging AI workflows.
- Work in lockstep with AI engineers to evolve Translucent into an AI‑first company.
What you will bring
- 5+ years of backend engineering experience, ideally in data‑intensive or high‑scale systems.
- Strong skills in SQL and database design (PostgreSQL preferred), with proven experience in optimisation and scaling.
- Solid programming skills in Python, Go, Kotlin or a similar backend language.
- Experience designing and maintaining production APIs (REST/gRPC/tRPC).
- Comfort with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or similar) and containerised environments (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Understanding of data pipelines and ETL processes, working with both structured and semi-structured data.
- Exposure to AI-powered data frameworks and infra such as vector databases (Weaviate, Qdrant, Pinecone), graph databases (Neo4j, Memgraph), or model serving/routing systems (vLLM, LiteLLM).
- Familiarity with agent orchestration frameworks (LangGraph, Mastra) or AI observability tools (W&B Traces, Arize, OpenLLMetry).
- Experience building data pipelines optimised for AI workflows, e.g. embedding search, feature stores, or schema‑validated outputs.
- Clear, pragmatic communication and a collaborative approach.
- An interest in joining a small, fast‑moving startup where you can influence product direction and engineering culture.
Nice to have
- Experience with event‑driven architectures and streaming systems (Kafka, Pub/Sub, etc.).
- Familiarity with ClickHouse, ElasticSearch, or vector databases for high‑performance queries and indexing.
- Background in accounting, finance, or enterprise SaaS.
- Exposure to AI/ML-powered applications, LLM frameworks, or retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG).
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Senior Backend Engineer (Remote) employer: Translucent
Contact Detail:
Translucent Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Senior Backend Engineer (Remote)
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to folks in your industry on LinkedIn or at meetups. A personal connection can often get your foot in the door faster than a CV.
✨Tip Number 2
Show off your skills! Create a portfolio or GitHub repo showcasing your projects, especially those related to backend engineering and data systems. It’s a great way to demonstrate what you can do.
✨Tip Number 3
Prepare for interviews by practising common technical questions and coding challenges. We recommend using platforms that simulate real interview scenarios to boost your confidence.
✨Tip Number 4
Don’t forget to apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen by the right people. Plus, we love seeing candidates who are proactive!
We think you need these skills to ace Senior Backend Engineer (Remote)
Some tips for your application 🫡
Tailor Your CV: Make sure your CV highlights the skills and experiences that align with the Senior Backend Engineer role. We want to see how your background in backend engineering, especially with data-intensive systems, makes you a perfect fit for us.
Craft a Compelling Cover Letter: Your cover letter is your chance to shine! Use it to explain why you're excited about working at Translucent and how your experience can help us build AI-powered financial workflows. Keep it engaging and personal!
Showcase Your Projects: If you've worked on relevant projects, whether personal or professional, make sure to mention them. We love seeing real-world applications of your skills, especially in areas like API design and data pipelines.
Apply Through Our Website: We encourage you to apply directly through our website. It’s the best way for us to receive your application and ensures you’re considered for the role. Plus, it shows us you’re keen on joining our team!
How to prepare for a job interview at Translucent
✨Know Your Tech Stack
Make sure you’re well-versed in the technologies mentioned in the job description, especially PostgreSQL and Kafka. Brush up on your SQL skills and be ready to discuss how you've optimised databases or built data pipelines in the past.
✨Showcase Your Problem-Solving Skills
Prepare to discuss specific challenges you've faced in backend engineering, particularly around scaling systems or improving performance. Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure your answers and highlight your impact.
✨Understand the Company’s Vision
Familiarise yourself with Translucent's mission of integrating AI into finance. Think about how your experience aligns with their goals and be ready to share ideas on how you can contribute to their vision of building AI-powered financial workflows.
✨Ask Insightful Questions
Prepare thoughtful questions that show your interest in the role and the company. Inquire about their current projects, team dynamics, or how they envision the future of AI in their products. This not only demonstrates your enthusiasm but also helps you gauge if it’s the right fit for you.