Backend Engineer

Conduct; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Conduct is building the AI operating system for the world's largest enterprises. We are seeking pragmatic, high-agency engineers who own systems end-to-end, care about the platform as much as the feature, and thrive in ambiguity. If you're strong, you'll pick things up quickly.

You'll own architecture across production systems, tackle complex infrastructure challenges, and help scale our platform to meet enterprise demands while mentoring teammates and pushing for robust, observable solutions.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of backend experience with platform or infrastructure work.
• Strong system design instincts across APIs, infra, data flows.
• Experience with distributed systems, scaling PostgreSQL, queues, batch processing.
• Ability to benchmark, tune under load and make pragmatic trade-offs.
• Familiarity with LLM infrastructure at scale.
• Able to raise the bar through code, mentorship, and better systems.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture, developer experience, and production systems end-to-end.
• Build scalable infrastructure handling tens of millions of lines of code per customer; support enterprise-grade reliability.
• Design and maintain infrastructure that scales with growth and meets reliability targets.
• Tame LLM infrastructure to deliver high throughput and stable operations.
• Raise the floor across authentication, observability, and orchestration to avoid rebuilds.

Skills

Backend experience

System design

Distributed systems

PostgreSQL

LLM infrastructure

Mentorship

Tools

Queues

Batch processing

Observability

LLM harness

Job description

TL;DR: We're looking for exceptional builders who help us design and ship the foundational infrastructure that lets Conduct scale to the world's largest enterprises, while accelerating the product teams building on top of it.

Why Conduct

The world's largest companies are slowed down by the software they run on. We’re building the AI operating system that absorbs IT complexity and unlocks entirely new levels of speed, output, and ambition. We believe this is a generation-defining mission.

Major enterprises already trust us with their most critical systems, we just closed a $60M Series A from top-tier funds, and we're still early enough that what you build here defines the company.

We're a small, talent-dense team doing our life's work at Conduct - we value extreme ownership, high velocity, and low-ego collaboration. If you bring that same drive, we will make sure this is the place you do yours too.

Who we hire

We're looking for pragmatic, high-agency engineers who thrive in ambiguity and care as much about the system as the feature. Fundamentals matter more to us than familiarity with any specific tool. If you're strong, you'll pick it up fast.

You'll stand out if you:

• Have 3+ years of backend experience with exposure to platform or infrastructure work. You have seen what it actually takes to go from MVP to scalable, production-grade systems

• Have strong system design instincts and own problems end-to-end across APIs, infrastructure, and data flows

• Are experienced with distributed systems, scaling databases (postgres), queueing, and large-scale batch processing

• Understand how to benchmark and tune systems under real load, and know how to make pragmatic trade-offs when the data is ambiguous

• Are familiar with LLM infrastructure at scale

• Raise the bar around you — through code, mentorship, and better systems — and fix problems without waiting for permission

What you’ll own

You'll have broad ownership across architecture, developer experience and production systems.

The infrastructure problems are real and genuinely hard: we process tens of millions of lines of code per customer, generating large-scale LLM workloads under enterprise-grade reliability requirements. You'll work on the systems that keep product teams fast and unblocked and that hold up as we onboard some of the largest companies in the world.

In practice that means:

• Accelerating product teams. You build the platform that lets engineers focus on product, not plumbing: shared abstractions, sensible defaults, internal tooling that compounds.

• Scaling with confidence. You design and maintain infrastructure that meets stringent enterprise reliability requirements and doesn't become fragile as we grow.

• Taming LLM infrastructure. High token throughput, real-time usage, flaky providers — you make it reliable.

• Raising the floor, not just the ceiling. From auth to observability to job orchestration, you build systems that are well-designed from the start and don't need to be rebuilt later.

Our Stack

Our stack prioritises what matters: shipping to customers—fast—without compromising on quality and engineering.

Fundamentals are more important to us than familiarity with any technology or tool: if you're strong, we’re sure you'll pick it up fast. Here’s our setup:

• React, Vite, TanStack frontend

• Kotlin backend: Modern and expressive, paired with the maturity, tooling, and depth of the Java ecosystem. Lets us ship fast now without painting ourselves into a corner later.

• Temporal and PortKey: Absorbs infrastructure complexity around durable execution and enterprise-compliant LLM routing, so we can focus on shipping instead.

• Specialised LLM Harness: Built from hard-earned experience to give agents maximum freedom and intelligence without compromising on enterprise control, governance, or reliability.