At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead technical initiatives and design scalable backend systems using cutting-edge technologies.
- Company: Join Xapien, a fast-growing AI-driven company reshaping due diligence.
- Benefits: Enjoy unlimited holidays, private health insurance, and a £1k professional development fund.
- Other info: Be part of a collaborative culture that values learning and innovation.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in a dynamic environment while shaping the future of trust and transparency.
- Qualifications: 10+ years in software engineering with deep expertise in Go and distributed systems.
The predicted salary is between 75600 - 92400 £ per year.
About Us
Every business needs to know who they’re really working with whether it’s suppliers, investors, partners, or third parties. At Xapien, we’re reinventing how organisations do that, combining speed, scale and accuracy with cutting-edge AI. Since 2018, we’ve grown from a deep-tech startup to a global player in AI-driven due diligence and risk intelligence. 2024 was a landmark year as we closed a $10M Series A, earned recognition in the Chartis RiskTech100® and Everest Group’s Leading 50™, and expanded our products, markets and customer base. 2025 was even bigger: With new regulations, rising compliance pressure and growing reputation risks, organisations everywhere are demanding smarter, faster ways to work and they’re turning to us. Customers worldwide from global law firms and private banks to universities and nonprofits rely on Xapien to turn days of manual research into trusted insights, delivered in minutes.
Our momentum so far includes customers in a diverse range of industries, with particular growth in wealth management, financial services and supply chain onboarding. Demand is accelerating beyond our UK headquarters, across multiple continents with new customers in the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania.
Why this is an exciting time to join: This isn’t just another job role; it’s an opportunity to shape the future of the due diligence industry with a market-leading product trusted by global organisations. Whether you’re in marketing, communications, sales, or finance, you’ll play a critical role in driving growth, building credibility, and defining how we connect our product to a rapidly evolving market. We’re scaling fast with more customers, more releases, and bigger regulatory and market challenges. Expectations are rising, due diligence now means real-time insight, delivered efficiently and with impact. You won’t just be executing campaigns, closing deals, or managing numbers, you’ll be influencing strategy, optimising processes, and helping position a brand that’s setting the new standard for trust and transparency. For people who love learning, innovating, and making an impact that matters, now is the moment to be a part of Xapien.
The Role: We're hiring a Staff Backend Engineer to join our engineering team in a high-impact technical leadership role. You'll work on our most challenging technical problems, own parts of our platform’s architecture, and help shape the technical direction of our backend stack. Our tech stack centres on Go microservices, with Temporal workflows, MongoDB and ElasticSearch running on Kubernetes in GCP. You'll work with modern patterns including event-driven architectures, gRPC and REST APIs, and comprehensive observability with Grafana Cloud. You'll take technical ownership of major domains within our platform - whether that's our Investigations pipeline (web scraping, data provider integrations, LLM-powered analysis) or our Core App systems (user journeys, features, and configuration). You'll be a technical authority, establishing patterns that others follow and driving initiatives that span multiple teams.
What You'll Do:
- Own the technical direction and architecture for parts of our platform
- Design and build complex backend services and systems that scale
- Drive technical decisions that affect multiple teams
- Establish patterns, standards, and best practices that others will follow
- Lead complex technical initiatives from design through implementation
- Identify and address systemic technical challenges across our backend
- Write exemplary Go code that sets the standard for quality and design
- Mentor engineers across the organization, raising the technical bar
- Balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery
- Influence technology choices and architectural direction
- Collaborate with engineering leadership on technical strategy
- Build new systems and features while improving our existing architecture
What We're Looking For:
Essential:
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Deep expertise in Go, with mastery of concurrency, performance optimization, and advanced patterns
- Proven track record of designing and owning large-scale systems
- Strong experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, or similar complex systems
- Deep understanding of databases, particularly MongoDB or similar NoSQL systems
- Extensive experience with microservices architecture and inter-service communication
- Expert-level understanding of containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes)
- Experience establishing technical standards and patterns across teams
- Strong architectural thinking with ability to balance trade-offs
- Track record of mentoring and developing other engineers
- Ability to drive technical initiatives with minimal guidance
- Experience influencing technical direction at an organizational level
- Excellent communication skills with ability to articulate complex technical concepts
Highly Desirable:
- Experience with Temporal or similar workflow orchestration systems at scale
- Deep knowledge of event streaming platforms like Kafka
- Experience with LLMs and AI integration (particularly for Investigations team)
- Background in SaaS platforms or B2B products at scale
- Expert-level knowledge of observability tools (Grafana, Prometheus, etc.)
- Deep understanding of authorization patterns, security, and multi-tenancy
- Experience with protobuf and gRPC
Our Tech Stack:
- Languages: Go
- Databases: MongoDB
- Messaging & Orchestration: Temporal, Kafka
- APIs: REST, gRPC, protobuf
- Infrastructure: Kubernetes, GCP
- Observability: Grafana stack
- AI: LLMs (OpenAI, Gemini), RAG systems
What Success Looks Like: In your first 6 months, you will have:
- Owned and driven a significant technical initiative to completion
- Established new patterns or improved existing ones across teams
- Mentored multiple engineers, visibly raising technical standards
- Contributed to architectural decisions
- Been recognized as a technical authority in your domain
- Made measurable improvements to system reliability, performance, or scalability
- Influenced the technical direction of our backend platform
Here’s our promise to you: We are going to work with you - to build a rewarding and fulfilling career with the opportunities, challenges and resources you need to do your best work. We succeed together - you will own a meaningful part of the business through our employee shares & equity programme. Private health insurance to keep you in tip-top condition. Life Insurance – let's hope nobody ever needs this! Unlimited holidays – yes, it really is uncapped – take the time you need, when you need it. Everyone is learning, developing and challenging themselves so we have a £1k professional development fund per year if you want to learn new skills, even new things outside of work. Most importantly of all, we will work with you, to help you realise your fullest potential, always.
Staff Engineer in London employer: Xapien
At Xapien, we pride ourselves on being an exceptional employer, particularly for the Field Operations Support Associate role based in our vibrant Moorgate office. Our collaborative work culture fosters innovation and growth, offering unlimited holidays, private health insurance, and a generous professional development fund to support your career aspirations. Join us to be part of a fast-growing company that values your contributions and empowers you to make a meaningful impact in the world of AI-driven due diligence.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Staff Engineer in London
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Xapien or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to Xapien.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like Xapien.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like Xapien that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Staff Engineer in London
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Xapien.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Xapien and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at Xapien
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Xapien uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.
