algo1 - Staff Engineer

• Full stack with backend depth. Professional software engineering experience across the stack, with your strongest work in the backend: Python, Go, Java, or similar, and a portfolio of production systems you've owned end-to-end. You build the interface yourself when the feature calls for it. • Product mindset. You care about the people using what you build, and you take ownership for what your team puts in front of them, not just the part you wrote. • API design and evolution. You've designed APIs that other teams and clients depend on, and you understand the trade-offs between clean design, backwards compatibility, and speed. • Database and schema fluency. Practical experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL or similar), including schema design, indexing, migrations, and query optimisation. Working knowledge of at least one non-relational store. • Distributed systems experience. You've designed or meaningfully contributed to distributed backend systems, and understand event-driven patterns, asynchronous messaging, and the trade-offs at scale. • Shipping complex, customer-facing products at pace. Evidence that you can move real software into production quickly, making pragmatic decisions without letting perfection become a blocker. • Growth and ambition. A career that has moved fast, where you've taken on more scope sooner than the timeline would suggest. • AI-native engineering. You've shipped production code with frontier AI tools (Cursor, Claude Code, or similar) and push further into agentic workflows rather than push back on them. • B2B or enterprise product experience. Background building for business or enterprise customers, where reliability, integrations, and data pipelines matter as much as the interface. • Frontend craft. Comfort with a modern frontend framework (React, TypeScript, or similar) and an eye for interfaces that feel considered rather than merely functional. • Cloud infrastructure. Experience deploying and operating distributed services on AWS, GCP, or Azure. • Containers and orchestration. Docker and Kubernetes in production. • Real-time data. Experience processing or analysing real-time data streams at scale. • Retail or personalisation. Familiarity with retail technology, commerce platforms, or customer personalisation systems. • Startup experience. Background working at an early-stage startup. • We're a start-up and we're here because we want to build this. That takes real ambition, real pace, high intensity, and the kind of team you want next to you every day. The people who thrive here are curious, proactive, and love building. If you're happiest when you're creating, experimenting, and moving fast, you'll love it here. • We care about the people we're building alongside, and it shows in our small daily decisions, the calls we make when things get hard, and how we treat each other when no one is watching. We draw our energy from being together, so this is primarily an office-based role. It suits someone who enjoys the quick conversations and shared momentum that comes from building together. Our office is on what we think is the best garden square in London, just a couple of minutes from Tottenham Court Road, so it's easy to get to and a great place to build.