Staff Engineer

SR2 | Socially Responsible Recruitment | Certified B Corporation™; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 125,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

SR2 | Socially Responsible Recruitment is recruiting a Staff Engineer for London, a hybrid role, with a strong focus on cloud platforms, distributed systems and AI infrastructure. The successful candidate will influence the platform's technical direction while remaining hands-on.

The role requires deep GCP and Kubernetes/GKE expertise, plus experience designing scalable backend architectures and modern service patterns.

Qualifications

• Strong and deep experience with GCP.
• Extensive experience with Kubernetes and GKE.
• Experience designing and operating scalable, distributed cloud systems.
• Strong understanding of backend engineering and modern service architecture.
• Experience with Go and/or Python.
• Experience making architectural and technical decisions across complex systems.
• Hands-on approach to solving difficult technical problems.
• Strong communication skills and ability to influence engineers and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Shape the technical direction and evolution of the platform.
• Tackle complex architectural and distributed systems challenges.
• Design scalable, reliable and secure solutions on GCP.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to align backend services with the broader platform.
• Lead architectural decisions around Kubernetes, GKE, cloud architecture and platform capabilities.
• Proactively address scalability, resilience, performance and operational concerns.
• Improve developer experience to speed up building, deploying and operating services.
• Engage with AI workloads, LLMs and agentic tooling for infrastructure projects.

Skills

GCP

Kubernetes

Go

Python

Distributed systems

Backend architecture

Cloud architecture

Kafka

Redis

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Elasticsearch

Terraform

ArgoCD

GitOps

CI/CD

Observability

AI infrastructure

LLMs

Job description

Staff Engineer | London | Hybrid | £125,000 to £150,000

SR2 are supporting a really exciting technology company that is entering a significant period of growth and is looking for a Staff Engineer to help shape the next stage of its technical evolution.

This is a genuinely influential technical role within a highly technical engineering environment. The company is building and scaling a complex platform, working at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, distributed systems and AI, and they are looking for someone who can help tackle some of their most complex technical challenges.

The platform is built primarily on GCP, with Kubernetes and GKE at its core. They are looking for someone with deep experience designing and evolving cloud platforms and distributed systems, alongside a strong understanding of how modern backend applications and services are built.

You do not need to be joining from a traditional backend engineering role, but experience with Go and/or Python and a solid understanding of backend architecture will be important. You will need to understand the systems running on the platform, the challenges engineering teams face and how infrastructure and architecture decisions impact the wider product.

There is also a growing focus on AI, LLMs and agentic tooling, so this is a great opportunity for someone interested in working on the infrastructure and platform challenges that come with increasingly sophisticated AI workloads.

What you'll be doing

As a Staff Engineer, you'll be one of the senior technical voices within the team. You'll still be hands-on, but your role will go beyond delivering individual pieces of infrastructure.

You'll be:

• Helping shape the technical direction and evolution of the platform
• Tackling complex architectural and distributed systems challenges
• Designing scalable, reliable and secure solutions on GCP
• Working closely with engineering teams to understand how backend systems interact with the wider platform
• Driving technical decisions around Kubernetes, GKE, cloud architecture and platform capabilities
• Helping the team think ahead about scalability, resilience, performance and operational challenges
• Improving the developer experience and making it easier for engineers to build, deploy and operate services
• Working with technologies including Kubernetes, Kafka, Redis, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and Elasticsearch
• Helping shape how AI, LLM and agentic workloads are deployed and operated
• Identifying architectural risks and opportunities for improvement as the platform continues to scale
• Providing technical leadership and supporting other engineers across the team

What we're looking for

The biggest priorities for this role are:

• Strong and deep experience with GCP
• Extensive experience with Kubernetes and GKE
• Experience designing and operating scalable, distributed cloud systems
• A strong understanding of backend engineering and modern service architecture
• Experience with Go and/or Python
• Experience making architectural and technical decisions across complex systems
• A hands-on approach and willingness to get involved in solving difficult technical problems
• Strong communication skills and the ability to influence other engineers and technical stakeholders

You'll also ideally have experience with some of the following:

• Terraform and Infrastructure as Code
• GitOps and ArgoCD
• Kafka or other event-driven technologies
• Redis, PostgreSQL, MongoDB or Elasticsearch
• CI/CD and developer tooling
• Multi-region or highly available cloud systems
• Observability, monitoring and production operations
• AI infrastructure, LLMs or agentic tooling