Senior Software Engineer

Formula.; England; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Formula. is seeking a senior backend engineer to join its sports-tech platform in London. You will design and build scalable backend services on a modern cloud-native stack, with ownership from design to production.

You’ll integrate AI tooling thoughtfully to add genuine value, align with high-trust culture, and contribute to architecture decisions in a small, autonomous team. Hybrid work, London-based.

Qualifications

• Senior-level engineering rigour: clean, tested, well-documented code with performance and security in mind.
• Strong background in distributed systems and high-availability services.
• Experience with Kafka and event-driven architectures.

Responsibilities

• Design and build robust, scalable backend services on a modern cloud-native stack.
• Contribute to architecture decisions and engineering standards across core platform services.
• Own your work end-to-end from design through production.
• Work in a small, high-trust engineering team with a low-ego culture.
• Apply AI tooling thoughtfully as part of your engineering workflow.

Skills

Java 21

Kafka

Event-driven architecture

Distributed systems

Security-minded coding

AI tooling awareness

Code quality

Cloud-native design

Tools

AWS

Terraform

Flink

Spark

Claude Code

Job description

Salary: Up to £100,000 + Discretionary Bonus

We're working with a well-funded, founder-led startup in the sports-tech space. The co-founders are domain insiders backed by specialists in AI and SaaS, building next-generation intelligent content infrastructure for a fast-moving market. Small team, high trust, and real technical autonomy from day one.

This is a senior backend engineering role for someone with deep engineering foundations who has started to integrate AI tooling into how they work - not as a gimmick, but methodically. You understand where it adds genuine value and where it doesn't.

Responsibilities

• Design and build robust, scalable backend services on a modern cloud-native stack
• Contribute to architecture decisions and engineering standards across core platform services
• Own your work end-to-end - from design through to production and beyond
• Work at pace in a small, high-trust engineering team with a low-ego culture
• Apply AI tooling thoughtfully as part of your engineering workflow

Key Requirements

• Strong hands-on experience with Kafka and event-driven architecture
• Java 21 is the primary backend language - polyglot backgrounds across Node.js, Python or Go welcomed
• Background in distributed systems, high-availability services and scalable backend design
• Senior-level engineering rigour: clean, tested, well-documented code with performance and security in mind
• Practical experience using AI coding tools (Claude Code or similar) - you know when to use it and when not to
• Experience with Flink or Spark streams
• AWS, Terraform or cloud-native infrastructure experience
• Domain experience in sports tech, live event data or real-time data pipelines

Details

• Up to £100,000 + discretionary bonus
• Hybrid - London, 2-3 days in office

A strong opportunity for a senior engineer who wants genuine ownership, meaningful technical challenge, and the space to do their best work without layers of process getting in the way.

Due to the high volume of applications, not all applicants will receive feedback.