senior Backend Engineer - #2172335

Role – Back-end Engineer

Location - Sheffield

Hire type – Sub con or 1 year FTC

• Design, build, test and maintain secure, scalable backend services and APIs, primarily using Python.
• Deliver production-quality code through sound engineering practices: version control, automated testing, code review, CI/CD, and clear technical documentation.
• Integrate services with internal platforms, data sources and third-party APIs, handling authentication, authorisation, resilience, and error management appropriately.
• Build and support AI-enabled features, including integrations with LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt workflows, and agentic patterns.
• Implement appropriate AI evaluation, monitoring, guardrails, and human oversight to ensure solutions are reliable, secure, and used responsibly.
• Investigate and resolve defects, performance issues, and operational incidents; use logs, metrics, and traces to improve reliability.
• Work with product, design, data, and engineering colleagues to turn requirements into practical, maintainable technical solutions.
• Contribute to technical design discussions, estimate work realistically and deliver agreed outcomes to time and quality expectations.
• Keep up to date with relevant engineering, AI and security practices, applying them pragmatically to day-to-day delivery.

Skills required

• Strong hands-on Python development experience, including building backend applications, services, and RESTful APIs.
• Experience with common Python frameworks and tooling, such as FastAPI, Flask or Django; pytest; dependency/package management; and asynchronous programming where relevant.
• Good understanding of software engineering fundamentals: clean code, object-oriented and/or functional design, testing, debugging, API design, and source control.
• Experience working with relational and/or NoSQL databases, writing efficient queries and designing data models.
• Practical experience building or integrating generative AI solutions using LLM APIs and orchestration frameworks.
• Understanding of RAG, embeddings, vector stores, prompt design, agent workflows, model evaluation, and AI safety/guardrails.
• Experience with cloud-hosted applications, containers, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Awareness of secure development practices, including secrets management, access control, data protection, and dependency security.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to work through ambiguous technical issues.
• Clear written and verbal communication, able to explain technical decisions to engineers and non-technical colleagues.

Nice to have

• Front-end development experience with React, TypeScript, JavaScript, and modern UI/component libraries.
• Experience building full-stack applications or collaborating closely with front-end engineers on API contracts and user journeys.
• Familiarity with observability tooling, such as application logging, monitoring, and distributed tracing.
• Experience working in regulated, enterprise-scale or security-conscious environments.