Principal Backend Engineer (Python)

Location: Full-time in London, UK or New York, NY, US; in-person work is expected multiple days per week.

Salary: $315,000–$440,000 per year, plus equity.

Company

hirify.global is a Series A fintech software company using AI and LLMs to automate document processing and workflows for financial services customers.

What you will do

• Assess the backend architecture and identify high-impact improvements to reliability, scalability, and security.
• Design and implement core abstractions covering data models, pipeline reliability, and deployment patterns.
• Define the technical direction for scaling infrastructure from hundreds to thousands of customers and from millions to tens of millions of documents.
• Build and optimize high-throughput processing for financial documents and ML pipelines.
• Improve backend engineering practices through systems that support safe, efficient delivery.
• Work directly with the CTO, Head of Engineering, platform team, and infrastructure team in a hands-on individual contributor role.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience building and scaling backend systems, including meaningful experience taking systems from early stage to serious scale.
• Strong computer science foundation with deep technical skills in coding, architecture review, and production debugging.
• Experience scaling backend systems at companies growing from Series A to Series C+.
• Recent production experience with Python and cloud infrastructure.
• Experience handling sensitive, regulated data at volume, such as financial or healthcare data.
• Strong individual contributor orientation, with the ability to set technical direction and mentor without managing.

Nice to have

• Experience in B2B SaaS.
• Experience working in a startup environment where pragmatism and rapid delivery are important.

Culture & Benefits

• Equity and competitive compensation.
• Health insurance, pension or 401(k), uncapped annual leave, and parental leave.
• Top-of-the-line office equipment and occasional travel for retreats and team collaboration.
• Free on-demand mental health support.
• Collaborative, flat, multicultural environment with team members across five continents.
• Weekly inclusive, vegan-friendly company lunches and a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination.

Hiring process

• 20-minute initial screen.
• Up to 60-minute technical interview involving pull-request review and live coding.
• Two to three hours of technical and behavioral team interviews, followed by two professional references.