Senior Backend Architect

We're looking for a Senior Backend Architect to lead technical architecture and decision-making across our products, including existing systems and the new products and agents currently being built. This person will evaluate what we've already built, design the architecture for what's next, and make the technical calls needed to build and scale it. The role is focused on architecture and decision-making rather than day-to-day feature work.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, review, and evolve the technical architecture across our products, keeping things consistent, scalable, and maintainable as the portfolio grows
• Evaluate existing systems and codebases for architectural soundness, technical debt, and scalability constraints, and recommend improvements or redesigns where needed
• Lead the architectural design of new products and agents from the ground up, including system structure, data models, and integration patterns before development starts
• Make key technical decisions, such as build versus evolve, technology choices, and system boundaries, and own the outcomes of those decisions
• Set architectural standards for Django, DRF, and related Python workers, including how these components communicate with each other through well-designed APIs
• Make sure scalability, performance, and reliability are built into systems from the start rather than fixed after the fact
• Translate business and product requirements into sound technical architecture, working closely with product and engineering stakeholders
• Guide backend engineers on design and implementation decisions, reviewing their work along the way
• Spot risks, dependencies, and technical constraints early, and communicate them clearly to stakeholders
• Keep architectural documentation current to support engineering teams and future decisions
• Stay current with backend engineering and system design practices relevant to our stack, applying them where they add real value

Required Qualifications

Experience

• Minimum 4+ years of total backend software engineering experience
• Genuine experience in software architecture, evaluating and directing system design rather than just implementing features assigned by others
• Proven experience with Python and Django in a production environment, including Django REST Framework
• Experience assessing existing or legacy systems and producing scalability and architectural recommendations

Technical Competencies

• Strong understanding of Django application architecture, including app structure, data modelling, and query optimisation
• Strong understanding of proper Django REST Framework implementation, including API contract design, serializer architecture, and separation of business logic from the API layer
• Understanding of multi-agent system design and integration patterns, particularly how distributed agents and workers communicate with a core platform
• Solid understanding of relational database design principles and how they affect scalability
• Ability to evaluate a codebase independently and turn technical findings into business-relevant recommendations
• Familiarity with Celery, Redis, and async workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience architecting systems involving complex business logic
• Experience in advisory, consulting, or architecture-review capacities
• Familiarity with containerised and cloud-based deployment environments, and CI/CD tooling such as Jenkins

Scope of Role

This role is responsible for architectural direction and technical decision-making across our products and agents. It's not limited to a single product, and it's not a hands-on feature development role. Day-to-day feature implementation stays with the backend engineering teams. This role owns the architecture that those teams build on.

Who we are:

At CIED Group, we are on a mission to make the global food supply chain more efficient, intelligent and transparent. We design technologies that build data trust and drive productivity across the agri-food supply chain, from the farm to the consumer's plate.

Our flagship product, RightOrigins, is an agentic AI platform that drives automation throughout the supply chain workflows. We also provide traceability services and build custom audit management tools for food certification bodies, simplifying regulatory compliance and audit inspection processes with a digital, collaborative approach.

At CIED Group, every idea is built around one core belief: when data drives credibility, trust follows naturally.

What we offer:

• Friendly environment
• Chance to own responsibility and demonstrate accountability
• Chance to develop innovative skills & ideas
• International horizons - work with international teams and clients from all corners of the world
• Company parties, team events, and the opportunity to work with great colleagues from all over the world
• Medical Insurance

Industry: IT

Employment Type: Full-time

Location: Remote