Senior Back End Engineer I

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Design and build highly reliable, secure, and scalable software solutions for complex problems.
• Contribute to team guidelines ensuring our services meet top-tier security, performance, cost, and reliability standards.
• Set a high bar for code quality by providing constructive, detailed feedback on design documents and pull requests.
• Investigate issues across multiple services in production, drive learning from operational incidents, and feed improvements back into our prioritisation process.
• Own work items from initial concept to production, creating structured delivery plans, managing dependencies along the way and owning delivery of these work items.
• Partner with Product Managers to prioritize features, translate client requirements into technical specifications, and ensure solutions align with our overarching product vision.
• Confidently own the resolution of incidents, coordinating mitigation, fixes, and post-mortem artifacts.
• Mentor and support less experienced engineers, helping them level up technically and adapt to Thought Machine’s engineering philosophy.

Requirements

• Strong proficiency in modern backend languages (ideally Go or Python) and experience building distributed, cloud-native systems (Kubernetes, AWS/GCP, gRPC, PostgreSQL).
• A proven track record of breaking down ambiguous, and complex problems into clear, deliverable milestones.
• Experience supporting high-throughput systems in production environments and diagnosing complex issues across distributed systems.
• A highly collaborative, feedback-receptive mindset focused on finding the best outcomes for our clients and business rather than defending personal preferences.

Hiring

• Actively participate in our growth by leading technical interviews.
• Product & Delivery

Incident Management

Collaboration & Mentorship

Stakeholder Management

Translate highly technical problems and architectural decisions into clear concepts for non-technical stakeholders.

Communication

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to build consensus and document technical designs clearly.
• This is a full-time, permanent position based in our Lisbon office, requiring Three days a week onsite.

Benefits

• Highly competitive salary
• Voluntary Pension Plan (match up to 5%)
• Private Healthcare Insurance
• Comprehensive Life Insurance
• 25 days holiday plus public holidays
• Two charity days a year
• Daily Meal Allowance
• Access to outstanding learning materials and courses
• Sports and hobby clubs, subsidised by Thought Machine

All the latest tech you need

• Huge range of healthy (and not-so-healthy) snacks, smoothies and drinks
• A talented and experienced team as your colleagues

An environment where we encourage learning and progress

We actively hire candidates who demonstrate technical excellence in their field and welcome people of all ages and backgrounds, providing everyone with equal access to professional development. You are encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't accurately match the job description. We also encourage applications from those with different abilities, including candidates with ADHD, autism, dyslexia or dyspraxia.