Staff Engineer - Core Markets

About the role

This position is responsible for directing the technical strategy and long-term vision of the Core Markets engineering group at 9fin. The successful candidate will own the end-to-end architecture of critical platforms, ensuring they are built to scale from the outset and can handle future growth demands. You will act as a hands-on leader, writing significant code while simultaneously guiding the technical decisions of multiple engineering teams. The role requires influencing the direction of complex systems without relying on direct managerial authority, relying instead on technical excellence and clear communication. You will partner closely with the AI and Retrieval teams to define and implement scalable search and RAG capabilities that power new product features. A core part of the role is simplifying technical complexity by establishing common architectural patterns and standards across shared services. Ultimately, this role will directly contribute to the reliability and performance of the systems that power 9fin's market infrastructure.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Establish the technical strategy and architecture for Platform, AI, Retrieval, and shared engineering services to align with business objectives.
• Collaborate with engineering leaders and staff engineers to guide technical direction and prioritize platform investments based on impact.
• Design and specify scalable backend systems, resilient APIs, and robust shared platform capabilities that serve multiple products.
• Provide architectural guidance to distributed teams to simplify complexity, reduce duplication, and create consistent patterns.
• Partner with AI and Retrieval teams to architect scalable search infrastructures and Retrieval-Augmented Generation features.
• Lead complex, cross-functional technical initiatives, driving them from initial discovery and design through to production deployment.
• Improve platform reliability, scalability, and observability by defining standards and enforcing best practices for operational excellence.
• Contribute directly to essential technical tasks and elevate engineering standards through rigorous design reviews and hands-on mentorship.
• Utilize AI-assisted engineering tools and workflows to boost personal productivity and accelerate the delivery of high-quality software.
• Define the non-functional requirements for projects, ensuring security, performance, and scalability are considered from the start.
• Break down large initiatives into technical workstreams, identifying dependencies and risks to ensure successful execution.
• Act as a technical advisor to product and design teams, translating business requirements into feasible technical solutions.
• Mentor engineers across the Core Markets team, fostering a culture of learning and continuous improvement in engineering standards.
• Evaluate and recommend new technologies and tools, such as vector databases and search platforms, to address emerging needs.

Requirements

• Have experience designing and building large-scale backend systems that operate in production at scale.
• Demonstrate strong system design abilities, including the capacity to evaluate trade-offs and propose robust solutions.
• Show a history of leading technical initiatives that involved coordinating efforts across multiple engineering teams.
• Possess hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure, specifically AWS, and its associated services.
• Have practical experience working with Kubernetes for container orchestration and management.
• Show proficiency in building and consuming RESTful and GraphQL APIs in a production environment.
• Demonstrate strong programming skills in Python or another modern backend language relevant to high-scale systems.
• Have familiarity with AI-powered systems and concepts such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation and vector databases.
• Be comfortable influencing technical direction and decisions without holding a formal management title.
• Possess excellent communication skills, able to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Show a genuine desire to mentor engineers and actively contribute to improving the overall engineering standards.
• Have a proven track record of building and maintaining reliable, high-performance distributed architectures.
• Be experienced with infrastructure as code practices and modern deployment pipelines.
• Understand the principles of observability, including logging, metrics, and tracing, to diagnose complex issues.

Nice to have

• Have experience as a founding engineer or CTO at a startup, navigating the challenges of building systems from scratch.
• Have hands-on experience modernizing and refactoring legacy systems to improve performance and maintainability.

Skills & tools

• AWS
• Kubernetes
• Python
• APIs
• Distributed Architectures
• AI-powered systems
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Search platforms
• Vector databases

Practical notes

• The role is based in London and operates on a full-time engagement basis.
• The position offers a hybrid working model, with the flexibility to work abroad for up to 3 months annually.
• Benefits include private medical insurance, paid sick leave with income protection, group life assurance, a season ticket loan, and cycle to work schemes.
• Employees receive 25 holiday days per year, in addition to local public holidays, with the option to exchange some days.
• After 5 years of service, the role is eligible for a 1 month paid sabbatical to recharge and develop professionally.
• The position provides enhanced parental leave and flexible working options to support a healthy work-life balance.
• A professional learning and development budget is provided to support continuous education and skill growth.
• The team hosts quarterly socials and organizes company-wide summer and winter events to foster community.