Senior Backend Engineer
Gradient Labs is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer in London, United Kingdom. Level rates it ; you can apply on Level.
AI in this role
Builds scalable backend infrastructure and operating systems for autonomous AI customer operations agents.
Founded in 2023, we now work with some of the biggest names in banking and fintech. Our platform runs specialist agents, purpose-built for financial services, to eliminate manual work across customer support and back-office operations. Together, they give product and operations teams the visibility and control to trust every outcome.
We're a team of builders from companies like Monzo, Wise, Revolut and Google. If you're excited to tackle some of the hardest problems in AI and help shape the future of customer operations, we'd love to hear from you.
This isn't a maintenance role or a feature factory. At Gradient Labs, you will own systems that matter - from the first architectural decision through to production, scale, and everything that breaks along the way.
You'll work on the infrastructure that makes autonomous AI agents actually reliable in the real world. That means building for failure, designing for observability, and shipping with conviction - not waiting for a perfect spec that will never arrive.
Build the OS for AI Agents - Contribute to a safe, scalable platform that lets us iterate on autonomous agent capabilities faster than anyone else. You are building the infrastructure that makes AI actually work in production.
Ship Resilient Systems - Design and own systems that hold up under failures, retry storms, and resource starvation - with full observability baked in. Reliability is a baseline, not an aspiration.
Take Products from 0 → 1 → Scale - Scope something from scratch, make the early architectural calls, and stay responsible for it as it grows. We build with conviction and we see things through.
Move Fast, Ship Often - Iterate in small increments. Multiple deploys a day. Comfort with ambiguity is not optional - it is the job. The mission moves faster than the roadmap.
Substantial tenure building production software at a fast-growing company - fintech, AI, consumer tech, or any environment where pace and stakes were both high
Proven experience owning complex, high-stakes systems end to end - not handing off at merge, but staying accountable through observability, iteration, and scale
Deep fluency in Go (Golang) and comfort operating across a modern backend stack (PostgreSQL, Temporal, GCP, Kubernetes)
A product instinct that goes beyond technical elegance - you think from the customer backwards and bring that into every architectural decision
Senior, Staff, Principal or Distinguished level in practice - someone who has operated with real scope and real accountability
Genuine excitement for autonomous AI as a platform shift, not a trend - you want to build the infrastructure that makes agents genuinely reliable
Strong opinions, loosely held - conviction without ego, and always willing to be wrong in pursuit of the right answer
This is a unique chance to be part of a team working with cutting-edge technology to reshape how businesses will operate in the future. Over the next 10 years, every company will need to embrace AI-powered operations to stay competitive, and this role puts you right in the middle of that transformation.
You’ll tackle challenging and new problems, work with some of the most exciting brands across different industries, and be surrounded by a passionate, smart team that’s driven to build something groundbreaking.
Benefits & Logistics 🧡We’re still at early stages of building out our compensation bandings, whilst we continue to shape this, we’re open to chatting with people who have a range of salary requirements
Our compensation package has two key components - base salary & meaningful equity
Private medical & dental insurance
25 days holiday + bank holidays (or bank holiday opt out for 32 days holiday)
Team socials and offsites
Flexible working - we have an office in central London and a hybrid working approach. This role is open to London based or remote in the UK folks (ideally you'd be able to come into the office once per week)
The Interview Process 📝
30 mins Talent Screen with our Founding People & Talent
1hr Hiring Manager interview with our CTO, Neal Lathia
Take Home Task
Take Home Task Deep Dive interview with 2 of our Backend Engineers
Final Product Interview
How we rate this
Senior Backend Engineer at Gradient Labs rates 80 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Open the description and count.
Prepare for this job
A free preview built only from this posting: what it asks for, what you could be asked in an interview, and how to adjust your resume.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- Tell me about a project where backend engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where infrastructure was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where reliability was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Backend Engineering, Distributed Systems, Infrastructure, and Reliability. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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