Lead Backend Engineer — Routing & Optimisation

HIVED LTD; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

EMI options

Private medical insurance

Birthday day off

25 days holiday

Team lunch

Compensation review

Team socials

Dog friendly office

Laptop provided

Cycle to work

Maternity/Paternity policy

Job summary

HIVED LTD in London is seeking a Lead Engineer to own the routing, planning, and delivery systems that power the city’s parcel network. You’ll lead the Routing Squad, setting technical direction and driving high-quality, scalable software.

You’ll mentor engineers, collaborate with data scientists, product and operations, and translate strategic priorities into concrete architecture and delivery plans. A deep passion for optimisation and real-world impact is essential.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, including backend or distributed systems development.
• Experience leading engineers, either as a people manager or as a senior technical leader with ownership over team delivery.
• Proven ability to translate complex, ambiguous business or operational problems into robust technical solutions.
• Strong system design and architectural skills in distributed, production-grade environments.
• An appetite for hard optimisation problems - routing, scheduling, forecasting, supply-demand matching, or other constraint-heavy domains.
• Strong ownership mindset: you care about the strategy, the system, the team, and the real-world outcome.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Routing Squad across technical strategy, delivery, team leadership, and execution of squad goals.
• Own the technical direction for systems supporting routing optimisation, supply-demand matching, parcel distribution, forecasting, and planning.
• Translate business priorities and operational needs into clear technical strategy, measurable outcomes, and pragmatic execution plans.
• Guide architecture and system design for scalable, reliable, production-grade optimisation and planning systems.
• Work closely with optimisation engineers, backend engineers, data scientists, analysts, product, and operational stakeholders to turn complex problems into shipped solutions.
• Lead the exploration and evaluation of new approaches across routing, scheduling, optimisation, forecasting, and distributed systems.
• Set and uphold a high engineering bar through technical reviews, architectural guidance, mentoring, and accountability for maintainable software.
• Manage, coach, and develop engineers in the squad, including hiring, performance management, development planning, and resourcing.
• Foster a culture of curiosity, ownership, high performance, and continuous learning within the team.

Skills

Software engineering

People leadership

System design

Optimization

Cross-functional collaboration

Ownership mindset

Tools

Python

Go

AWS

CDK TypeScript

Lambda

SQL/Data stores

Job description

HIVED LTD in London is seeking a Lead Engineer to own the routing, planning, and delivery systems that power the city’s parcel network. You’ll lead the Routing Squad, setting technical direction and driving high-quality, scalable software.

You’ll mentor engineers, collaborate with data scientists, product and operations, and translate strategic priorities into concrete architecture and delivery plans. A deep passion for optimisation and real-world impact is essential.