Lead/Staff Backend Engineer

Gorilla; City Of London; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative tech company in the UK seeks a Lead/Staff Backend Engineer to design and scale their data platform. You'll lead architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and contribute to strategic planning while ensuring system performance in high-demand environments. The ideal candidate has strong Python expertise, experience with relational databases, and a background in SaaS applications.

Qualifications

• Expertise in modern software design patterns and testing practices.
• Extensive experience scaling high-throughput systems.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and container orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Lead architectural decisions ensuring system scalability and reliability.
• Drive cross-functional technical initiatives with other teams.
• Mentor and support other engineers in technical growth.
• Design distributed systems for complex workflows and large data volumes.
• Take ownership of critical components ensuring quality and resilience.
• Influence technical direction and engineering culture.
• Contribute to strategic planning and long-term technical vision.

Skills

Expertise in Python

Extensive experience with relational databases

Deep understanding of distributed systems

Proven track record of working on data-intensive and high-load backends

Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS)

Strong architectural intuition

Leadership experience

Experience in defining and improving DevOps pipelines

Strong communication skills

Proactive and pragmatic mindset

Job description

Join us at Gorilla and help shape the digital backbone of the energy transition. As a Lead/Staff Backend Engineer, you'll play a pivotal role in designing and scaling our data platform, powering key decisions for energy companies worldwide. We're committed to delivering high-performance, data-intensive SaaS solutions that help our clients maximize ROI and accelerate their path to net‑zero. You’ll work at the intersection of deep technical expertise and strategic thinking, contributing not only to our product architecture but also to how we build and scale our engineering culture.

What you'll do

As a Staff Engineer in our Platform team, you’ll be a technical leader responsible for evolving and scaling the core API and data systems that support our pricing, forecasting, and analytics applications. You'll balance hands‑on development with strategic contributions across teams. Your responsibilities will include:

• Lead architectural decisions across the platform, ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance in high‑load, data‑heavy environments.
• Drive cross‑functional technical initiatives that have a broad impact across the product, working closely with Product Managers, Designers, and fellow Engineers.
• Mentor and support other engineers, fostering technical growth and best practices through design reviews, pair programming, and knowledge sharing.
• Design and build distributed systems that handle complex workflows and large volumes of energy data efficiently and securely.
• Take ownership of critical components, ensuring they evolve with the needs of the business and maintain a high bar for quality and resilience.
• Influence technical direction and culture, helping shape how we build systems and collaborate as a team.
• Contribute to strategic planning, helping define roadmaps and long‑term technical vision in partnership with engineering and leadership.

What we’re looking for

• Expertise in Python, with a strong command of modern software design patterns, testing practices, and performance optimization.
• Extensive experience with relational databases and data modeling for high‑throughput systems.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems design and the trade‑offs involved in consistency, availability, and partition tolerance.
• Proven track record of working on data‑intensive and high‑load backends, ideally within SaaS environments.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms, especially AWS, and experience with infrastructure‑as‑code and container orchestration.
• Strong architectural intuition and ability to drive clarity in ambiguous, complex technical situations.
• Leadership experience through mentoring, leading initiatives, or shaping engineering practices across teams.
• Experience in defining and improving DevOps pipelines, observability, and platform reliability.
• Strong communication skills and a collaborative mindset—able to build alignment across stakeholders.
• Proactive and pragmatic: able to balance technical excellence with delivery impact.

Eligibility

To be considered for this role, you must already have the legal right to work in Belgium, Germany or the UK. Please note that our company does not provide visa sponsorship or relocation support for this position.