Staff Software Engineer (Core Systems) - Robotics

Burns Sheehan Limited; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Burns Sheehan Ltd is recruiting a Staff Software Engineer (Core Systems) to design and build the central scheduling and resource-allocation components for a robotics and life sciences platform in London. The role combines hands-on coding with technical leadership in a small, high-autonomy team.

You'll work across Go and Python, tackle complex optimisation problems, and ensure real-time coordination of constrained resources on edge Kubernetes deployments.

Qualifications

• Strong backend and distributed systems experience.
• Experience with Go and Python for production systems.
• Expertise in optimisation, scheduling and resource allocation.
• Hands-on with Kubernetes and edge/distributed environments.

Responsibilities

• Design core scheduling, routing and resource-allocation systems behind the platform.
• Solve complex optimisation problems using modelling and solvers.
• Build distributed, event-driven systems operating in real time.
• Work across Go and Python as core logic moves to Go.
• Design systems running on Kubernetes in edge environments.
• Lead architectural decisions and raise engineering quality.
• Mentor engineers and influence best practices.
• Collaborate with Product and customers to translate solutions into outcomes.

Skills

Go

Python

Optimisation modelling

Scheduling

Distributed systems

Event-driven architecture

Leadership

Architecture thinking

Tools

Kubernetes

Google OR-Tools

Gurobi

NATS JetStream

Kafka

Job description

Staff Software Engineer (Core Systems) - Robotics & Life Sciences | Complex Distributed Systems

London hybrid, 3 days per week

£130,000 to £170,000

Go/Python |Optimisation |Distributed Systems | Kubernetes |Event-Driven Architecture

Staff Software Engineer - We're working with a technology company building the software and robotics platform used to automate laboratory work across pharma and biotech.

Their technology is directly supporting work across drug discovery, diagnostics and scientific research. Over the last year they've rebuilt their core platform from scratch and are now entering the next phase: building significantly more sophisticated functionality for larger pharma and biotech customers.

The Product, Engineering and Design organisation is deliberately lean and flat, giving senior engineers genuine influence over architecture, engineering standards and what gets built next.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll work on the core systems responsible for orchestrating physical laboratory automation. This isn't standard backend engineering. You'll tackle problems around scheduling, resource allocation, routing and optimisation, building distributed systems that have to coordinate physical resources reliably and in real-time.

The platform runs Kubernetes at the edge, where compute is constrained rather than effectively unlimited, creating a very different set of engineering trade-offs to traditional cloud SaaS.

You'll remain deeply hands-on while providing technical leadership across the team, owning difficult architectural problems, improving engineering quality and helping other senior engineers deliver complex systems.

What will the Staff Software Engineer do?

• Design and build the core scheduling, routing and resource-allocation systems behind the platform
• Solve complex optimisation problems using constraint modelling and solver technologies
• Build and evolve distributed, event-driven systems operating in real time
• Work across Python and Go as core product logic increasingly moves towards Go
• Design systems running on Kubernetes within constrained edge environments
• Own significant areas of technical architecture and drive decisions through ambiguity
• Raise the quality bar across design, implementation, testing and production ownership
• Mentor senior engineers and help establish stronger engineering practices across the team
• Work closely with Product and customers to ensure complex technical solutions translate into real scientific outcomes

What will the Staff Software Engineer bring?

• Strong software engineering fundamentals with significant backend and distributed systems experience
• Experience with Go and/or Python, with an appetite to work across both
• Genuine experience with optimisation modelling, scheduling, routing, constraint solving or resource allocation
• Exposure to solver technologies such as Google OR-Tools, Gurobi or similar
• Strong event-driven architecture experience using technologies such as Kafka, NATS JetStream or equivalent
• Comfort working with graph-based problems, algorithms and complex system modelling
• Experience with Kubernetes and distributed production environments
• A track record of taking technically difficult problems through to working products, not just research or modelling
• Staff-level technical leadership skills, with the ability to influence architecture and raise the standard of engineers around you

This is an unusual opportunity for a Staff Software Engineer who enjoys genuinely difficult computer science problems but still wants to see their work shipped into the real world.

You'll join a small, high-autonomy engineering organisation immediately after a major platform rebuild, with the opportunity to define core technical systems that directly support drug discovery, diagnostics and life sciences research.

Staff Software Engineer (Core Systems) - Robotics & Life Sciences | Complex Distributed Systems

London hybrid, 3 days per week

£130,000 to £170,000

Go/Python |Optimisation |Distributed Systems | Kubernetes |Event-Driven Architecture

Burns Sheehan Ltd will consider applications based only on skills and ability and will not discriminate on any grounds.