Principal Backend Engineer

Salary: £52,000 - 92,000 per year

Requirements

• At least ten (10) years of experience as a software engineer, including at least 2 years at the Senior Staff/Principal level (L7+).
• Previous leadership experience driving projects across multiple teams (50+ engineers).
• Experience in a high-performing engineering organization operating at scale, either in a scale-up environment or a more established organization with a strong engineering culture.
• Ability to work across the stack, with deep knowledge of server-side and backend engineering.
• Relevant engineering experience building an enterprise-grade SaaS product.
• Strong alignment with commercial success.
• Extra points for experience delivering AI-powered video generation products, billing systems, experimentation platforms, video delivery systems, online editors, or real-time collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Focus on backend friction points across Engineering and help steer backend direction.
• Improve inter-service testing and overall engineering stability.
• Standardize practices across Engineering and bring R&D teams closer together.
• Own projects that span quarters and break problems into small, iterative, validated steps.
• Evaluate the impact of your work using our data pipeline and frameworks, and pivot where necessary to support commercial objectives.
• Consider the long-term direction of Engineering and build capabilities to stay ahead of challenges expected in the next 12-18 months.
• Work end to end, from our React client application to our monolithic Python backend.
• Lead projects across multiple teams.

Technologies

• AI
• Backend
• Datadog
• Support
• Python
• React
• Security
• Webflow
• ARM
• LLM

More

We are Synthesia, the worlds leading AI video platform for business, used by over 90% of the Fortune 100 and trusted by more than 50,000 customers. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in London, we have offices and teams across Europe and the US. We recently completed a Series E funding round, raising $200 million and bringing our valuation to $4 billion, with total funding exceeding $530 million from leading investors including Accel, NVentures, Kleiner Perkins, GV, and Evantic Capital, alongside founders and operators from Stripe, Datadog, Miro, and Webflow. We are building in the golden age of AI, with a culture focused on shipping, strong work principles, proprietary in-house AI technology, and a commitment to AI safety, ethics, and security. This is a full-time role in our Engineering department, based either in-office or remote in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, or Ireland, with possible support for other European locations subject to compliance and right-to-work checks. The salary starts at EUR/GBP/CHF 200,000 base plus stock options, and we offer 25 days of leave plus local holidays.

last updated 35 week of 2026