Staff Engineer

Octopus Legacy; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking company on a mission to transform the way people prepare for death and legacy. As a Staff Engineer, you will shape the technical direction of innovative products and systems, driving architectural excellence and enhancing developer experience. This pivotal role requires a blend of technical expertise and leadership, enabling you to mentor engineers and foster a cohesive engineering culture. If you thrive in a fast-paced startup environment and are passionate about solving complex challenges, this is an exciting opportunity to make a meaningful impact in a growing organization.

Benefits

Flexible holiday + extra day off for your Birthday

Work from anywhere in the world for up to 4 weeks per year

Vitality Health & Life Insurance

Enhanced parental leave

Free Will & LPAs + discounts on other Octopus services

Cycle to Work Scheme

Electric Vehicle (EV) Salary Sacrifice Scheme

Octopus Giving: match charitable fundraising up to £500

Breakfast every day, snacks and wellness activities

Qualifications

• Proven experience as a senior or staff engineer with deep technical knowledge.
• Strong foundation in writing clean, maintainable code and delivering projects.
• Experience in large tech companies and fast-paced startups.

Responsibilities

• Optimize tooling and infrastructure for exceptional developer experience.
• Define architectural decisions ensuring scalability and reliability.
• Lead hands-on work on complex projects and provide technical mentorship.

Skills

System Design

Distributed Systems

Scalable Architectures

Clean Code

Problem Solving

Agile Methodologies

Technical Mentorship

Communication Skills

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Agile Tools

DevOps Tools

Job description

We’re Octopus Legacy: one of the fastest growing tech companies in the country, part of the UK’s most exciting and best-trusted group (you may have heard of some of our sister companies…) and we have a mission.

We’re on a path to scale, aiming to become a household name while transforming a long-established industry and helping our customers prepare for, and find support after, death.

But we can’t do it alone, and that’s why we’re assembling a team of top performers to build with us.

Ready to be part of something big?

The Role

We are looking for an experienced and technically exceptional Staff Engineer to join our team as our first hire in this role. Reporting directly to the Head of Technology, you will play a pivotal part in shaping the technical direction of our products and systems while driving architectural excellence, developer experience, and hands-on contributions to our most complex projects.

This is a multiplier role, where your impact goes beyond your own work - you will enable and elevate the entire engineering team by providing mentorship, driving consistency, and improving processes to ensure the team delivers high-quality solutions at scale. As the company grows, you will have the opportunity to expand your impact by working across multiple teams, ensuring alignment of technical direction and fostering a cohesive engineering culture. You will serve as a technical leader and mentor, collaborating closely with peers across engineering, product, and other business functions to ensure the company’s technology aligns with strategic goals.

This is a key position for someone passionate about solving tough technical challenges, raising the bar for engineering excellence, and thriving in a fast-paced, high-growth startup environment. If you’re comfortable navigating ambiguity, excited by the opportunity to lead and build, and eager to make a meaningful impact, we’d love to hear from you.

Key Responsibilities:

• Developer Experience: Optimise tooling, processes, and infrastructure to create an exceptional developer experience, enabling the team to work effectively and efficiently.
• System Architecture: Define and drive architectural decisions, ensuring scalability, reliability, and maintainability while balancing trade-offs between short-term needs and long-term goals.
• Hands-On Contributions: Lead by example through hands-on work on complex, high-priority projects, contributing to codebases, reviews, and technical discussions.
• Proof of Concepts: Evaluate and implement new tools, technologies, and approaches through proof-of-concept projects to explore innovation and solve critical business challenges.
• Technical Mentorship: Provide guidance, support, and mentorship to engineers across the team, helping them grow their technical expertise and align with best practices.
• Engineering Excellence: Champion high standards for coding, testing, documentation, and design, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and learning.
• Technical Strategy: Collaborate with the Head of Technology and Engineering Manager to define and execute the company’s technical strategy, ensuring alignment with business goals and scalability for growth.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Engage with business stakeholders to understand their needs and identify technical solutions that drive value, delivering impactful outcomes through technology.

Who Are You?

• Extensive Technical Expertise: Proven experience as a senior or staff engineer, demonstrating deep knowledge of system design, distributed systems, and scalable architectures.
• Hands-On Experience: You have a strong technical foundation and a passion for writing clean, maintainable, and efficient code, with a history of delivering impactful projects.
• Leadership & Mentorship: You excel at mentoring engineers, providing constructive feedback, and fostering a culture of growth and learning across the team.
• Problem Solving & Innovation: You thrive on solving complex technical problems, leveraging innovative approaches to deliver practical and efficient solutions.
• Agile Mindset: Experience working in agile, lean, or startup environments, with a strong focus on iteration, continuous improvement, and adaptability.
• Communication & Collaboration: Exceptional communication skills, capable of effectively working with cross-functional stakeholders, influencing decision-making, and driving alignment.
• Technical Strategy Alignment: You think strategically about technology and are comfortable contributing to high-level planning and decision-making.
• Experience at scale: Previous experience working in large tech companies, contributing to scalable and consistent technical practices across multiple teams, and ensuring alignment on architecture, standards, and best practices.
• Start-Up Experience: Ideally, you have worked in fast-paced, high-growth startups and are comfortable navigating uncertainty, change, and ambiguity.
• Optimism & Resilience: You view challenges as opportunities, maintain a positive outlook when things don’t go as planned, and inspire others to see setbacks as a chance to learn and grow.
• Empathy & Team Focus:You value building trust and strong relationships, balancing technical priorities with team well-being and alignment.

Our Mission

When people think about planning for death they think about wills, life insurance and funerals. We take these cold processes and turn them into something more human. Share more than money: leave voice notes, music, recipes. Shape a legacy that connects you while you're here. And after you're gone.

Founded by Sam after his mum died suddenly, we’re a group of people who work in death because we’ve been affected by it. We know the difference a good plan makes, and what it’s like when there isn’t one.

Death can come between us, leave mess, legal fees, frustration. But it can also make us stronger. We see a world where people talk openly about death, and work out the real meaning of legacy, one that connects to them. We’re here to make that world happen.

• Hybrid working (London Bridge).
• Flexible holiday + extra day off for your Birthday.
• Work from anywhere in the world for up to 4 weeks per year.
• Vitality Health & Life Insurance.
• Enhanced parental leave.
• Free Will & LPAs + discounts on other Octopus services.
• Cycle to Work Scheme and access to the Electric Vehicle (EV) Salary Sacrifice Scheme.
• Octopus Giving: we match any charitable fundraising that you do up to £500.
• Breakfast every day, snacks and wellness activities.

We know that to be truly innovative, we need to have a diverse team around us. That is why Octopus Legacy is committed to creating an inclusive environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

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