Lead Backend Engineer, Data & AI

# Lead Backend Engineer, Data & AIFull-time Engineering Remote Job DescriptionWe're on a mission to protect society from fraud and money laundering. We've already protected over 2.3 million people through life's big transactions, with a core aim to protect 3.5 million people by the end of 2025.Fraud and regulation are rising, costing the UK economy over £100bn every year; this makes it more difficult for businesses to protect themselves and their clients - individuals like you and me - from fraud and money laundering.Our co-founders Olly and Jack were led to this area when a friend was defrauded of £25K when buying their first property. At the time, anti-fraud technology didn't exist, which meant that completing the anti-fraud checks required in these processes was largely manual. These big life moments should be exciting, but instead are often confusing and scary due to the painful process of completing these paper-based checks and the risk of fraud.Thirdfort helps businesses to facilitate these anti fraud checks so that individuals know they can transact safely and seamlessly with professionals during these big transactions.Our anti-fraud platform provides a secure way for professionals in regulated sectors like Lawyers, Estate Agents and Accountants to transfer funds and verify sensitive information through app based document checks, facial recognition and open banking.Over 1000 businesses now trust Thirdfort to verify their clients. We are FCA regulated and have raised over $25m in capital from leading Fintech investors Breega and Element Ventures, as well as the founders of Zoopla, Funding Circle, Comply Advantage, Tessian, Fenergo and Fidel. Engineering at Thirdfort: At Thirdfort, we're working to build an outstanding engineering culture that empowers our team to do their best work. We have a culture which cultivates an honest and open environment, where everyone's opinions are heard and valued.We are looking for a Lead Backend Engineer to join our Data & AI team within the Engineering function. Your mission will be to integrate data-driven insights and capabilities into our customer-facing products and core business operations. This is a new and vital role with a distinct focus on leveraging your data engineering skills to deliver real outcomes for customers. You will play a key part in leveraging our data to its fullest by establishing the infrastructure needed for analytics and reporting as well as the effective application of Machine Learning (ML) and Large Language Models (LLMs).This is a hands-on individual contributor role for a leader who can shape conversations, weave together business needs with technical opportunities, and deliver pragmatic solutions that have a concrete business impact. You will report directly to the Head of Engineering as part of a specialist team.Our Product and Tech teams are remote first and so this individual can be based anywhere in the UK. You are welcome in either of our offices, London and Manchester, as we truly value the times when we can come together in person. Ultimately we trust our team to work in the way that suits them best. As a Lead Backend Engineer, Data & AI, you will:- Define and own the data strategy in collaboration with the Head of Engineering, managing data infrastructure, schema and APIs, and ensuring data is user-friendly.- Establish strong data foundations by identifying data sources, assessing their quality, iterating on the data model, and improving our data pipelines.- Identify opportunities for product-driven AI initiatives and build working prototypes or complete solutions to deliver quick wins.- Develop our foundational data architecture and outline key focus areas for the next 1-2 years, including democratising data access and determining our approach to LLM usage.- Consider opportunities to adopt recent advances in AI workflows including Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agentic approaches leveraging existing foundational models.- Take ownership of identifying and mitigating security, quality, and compliance risks within the data estate.- Support and advise colleagues on the existing data stack. We're looking for someone who:- Has a product engineering mindset with a strong focus on customer outcomes.- Has at least two years of practical experience in data engineering, including ingesting and transforming data and designing schemas.- Has professional experience (at least 6+ months) integrating Machine Learning (ML) and Large Language Models (LLMs) into real business processes.- Can demonstrate taking the lead on designing and implementing an AI solution that delivered significant customer benefits, from exploring the business use case to technical design.- Has significant experience building responsive, performant APIs for internal and external engineering teams.- Has experience with modern software engineering practices and backend languages.- Is a leader who can independently shape conversations and decisions to deliver pragmatic solutions with concrete business impact. You might be an excellent fit if you:- Have a deep experience in at least one Cloud Platform data stack, ideally GCP.- Can communicate complex topics effectively with stakeholders of varying technical ability.- Have experience working within cross-functional teams and collaborating with Product, Design, and Commercial departments.- Have experience with Go or a strong desire to learn it.- Have enabled and maintained 3rd party API integrations.- Have experience with modern CI/CD pipelines, and have built and maintained test suites.- Have a rounded full-stack engineering background. Studies show that women and other less represented groups are less likely to apply for roles unless they meet every requirement. We believe in building a diverse team, valuing different skills and experiences and so if you don't think you have all the requirements listed here but feel this could be a role and environment you'd thrive in, we would still love for you to apply. Life at Thirdfort:- Driven by our values, our culture promotes a collaborative and open environment where Thirdforters can take ownership, have impact, and feel empowered when it comes to their growth and development. We understand the importance of our teams wellbeing and recognise a one-size fits all approach rarely works, that's why we aim to provide the flexibility individuals need to work in the way that suits them, and their families, best. Our Benefits: - We include compensation ranges on our job ads in the spirit of Operating Openly and in an effort to make our interview process more inclusive. We list a range that aligns with our internal banding which is based on varying factors including external benchmarking for our stage and size as a business. In terms of how we decide where an individual fits within the band, we'd take you through the interview process and assess you against our internal performance framework which gives us further clarity. We'll also have open conversations with you throughout the interview process (starting in the first stage call) so we can be as open as possible about compensation as we understand how important it is to ensure we're aligned.- We've created our benefits package to reflect Thirdfort's mission and values. We place a strong focus on Security first given what we do, extending this to our team's physical, mental and financial security to support them through their big life moments. Our benefits exist to empower our team, ensuring they feel supported and able to work in the way that enables them to do their best work. When you join Thirdfort, you'll get immediate access to our flexible employee benefits package that aims to support you across these areas: - Compensation - £95K- £115K p.a. base salary- Share options for all employees- Flexible Working Hours- Enhanced parental leave- Customisable wellness budget and £250 WFH