Senior Platform Engineer (City of London)

Company Description

Xapien is one of the brightest and most exciting tech companies to appear over the last few years. The AI-powered automated research platform is redefining background research and gaining critical success from clients. Every business in the world, in every sector, needs to know who they are engaging with and Xapien helps them answer that question – quickly and accurately. We use deep Natural Language Processing, AI and huge scale cloud infrastructure to automate human research. We locate, collect, read, distil and assimilate hundreds of thousands of fragments of information – allowing us to understand a person or company like a human would. We deliver daily insight to major financial institutions, industry regulators, charities and commercial organisations – and the potential market for the solution is enormous. Founded in 2018 by experts in national intelligence and anti-money laundering, Xapien aims to revolutionise business due diligence with its AI-driven technology. Since securing Series A funding, our team has grown to 50, and we’ve achieved notable recognitions, including ranking 33rd globally in Chartis Research’s FCC50 and winning the Entity Management award.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced Senior Platform Engineer to help us meet the exciting challenge of scaling our platform to handle growing demand. Our product is experiencing tremendous growth, and we need to ensure that we continue to deliver accurate insights while doubling down on how we architect, coordinate, and maintain our subsystems. This role requires someone who thrives in a fast-paced environment where continuous innovation and refinement are key. You will play a crucial role in shaping how our technology evolves, ensuring that our systems are scalable, reliable, and capable of meeting future demands. Working alongside our engineering leadership, you’ll be at the heart of building capability for system reliability & scale, while also staying hands-on with the implementation of designs from system architecture.

Core Responsibilities

• Designing, building, and maintaining scalable, reliable, and secure cloud infrastructure on AWS using technologies including EC2, ECS, Lambda, SQS, DynamoDB, RDS, Cognito, S3, and SNS.
• Developing and deploying cloud-native applications following microservice design patterns.
• Implementing infrastructure as code using tools like Terraform or CloudFormation to automate deployment and scaling processes.
• Automating deployment pipelines and CI/CD processes to ensure rapid and reliable delivery of software.
• Monitoring system performance, troubleshooting issues, and optimising infrastructure for performance and cost-efficiency.
• Collaborating with the development team to ensure seamless integration and deployment of applications.
• Ensuring best practices in security, compliance, and data protection are followed across all infrastructure components.
• Mentoring and providing guidance to junior engineers, promoting a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

Qualifications

• AWS - You should bring a strong understanding of AWS with practical experience in deploying, managing and optimising cloud-based applications, ensuring they remain reliable and scalable.
• Go / C# - We use Go for all of our core services that require scaling e.g. API’s / load balancers. We use C# for business logic. You will bring expertise in developing software using either Go or C#, preferably in a professional environment but personal projects which you can discuss in detail could also suffice.
• Linux / Bash Scripting - You will be comfortable navigating around in a Linux ecosystem, setting up firewalls, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), installs & bash scripting.
• Terraform - You will have a strong track record of successfully using Terraform in a professional CI/CD environment.
• Microservices architecture design skills - You will bring experience in understanding how to architect cloud-based systems using microservices, ensuring each component is scalable, secure, and reliable.

Additional Information

• Equity in the business in the form of shares – You will own a meaningful part of the business through our employee shares & equity programme.
• Unlimited Paid Time Off for you to take time to recharge.
• A professional development fund of £1,000 per year – we invest in our people and always encourage growth!
• Private health and Life insurance.
• High-spec MacBook + £200 for equipment setup.
• Regular team lunches and social events, from go-karting to mini golf to karaoke to rounders in the park.
• X day – one whole company day off every February so we can all switch off Slack and reset.
• Flexible working + flexible hours (2 days per week in our WeWork in Moorgate).
• Please note, we cannot offer sponsorship to applicants (or transfer existing visas) at present.
• Salary: up to £100,000 + bonus + equity (dependent on experience).

Our Values

• Take ownership – We keep our organisation simple, valuing people over policies. We encourage ownership and decision-making.
• Better together – We care about each other and go out of our way to help colleagues succeed. We value relationships and take a genuine interest.
• Transparent – Our business is creating transparency in business relationships; so internally we are ‘default share’, even when it feels uncomfortable.
• Glass-half-full – This is about being real but still choosing to be optimistic. We celebrate wins and encourage each other to build forward.
• Be pioneers – We are leaders not followers – bold, ambitious and can-do. We don’t start with what’s possible, we start with what we want to achieve, then ask ‘what has to be true’?
• Move fast – This is our moment to make our mark on the world. So we work to ambitious deadlines, launch fast and iterate, always streamline, and remain decisive amid huge uncertainty.
• Value learning – We are all learning, always. We take time to explain, even if it’s quicker to do it ourselves.
• Always decent – We are polite, thankful and straightforward. Everyone is down-to-earth, informal and approachable.
• A players – Working here should be stretching and exhilarating. We only hire, and keep, the best, enquiring people that will keep us on our toes.