Staff Engineer
First seen by Alion on Sep 15, 2026.
ABOUT THE ROLE :
This is a technical leadership role for someone who operates at the intersection of deep engineering, team building, and strategic thinking. Youll own architectural decisions across domains, manage and grow the engineering team, and be the person founders turn to when the hardest problems need solving. Critically, this is not a purely strategic role, youll remain hands-on, implementing features and getting into the code whenever the team needs it.
WHAT YOULL DO :
- Own the technical architecture across the company's core platform, onboarding infrastructure, auditable regulation-compliant systems, payment rails, and partner integrations.
- Stay hands-on - actively implement features, contribute to critical codebases, and lead from the front when the team needs it most.
- Manage and grow the engineering team, hiring, mentoring, performance, and building a culture of ownership, craft, and high standards.
- Drive cross-functional technical decisions that span multiple teams and product areas, balancing speed with long-term maintainability.
- Identify and resolve systemic risks before they become production problems, bottlenecks, reliability gaps, security vulnerabilities, and architectural debt.
- Define and evolve engineering standards, patterns, and best practices across the organisation.
- Work directly with founders and product leadership to shape the technical roadmap and make critical build-vs-buy decisions.
- Lead evaluation and adoption of new technologies and tooling where they meaningfully improve the platform.
MUST-HAVE SKILLS :
- Backend mastery : Proven track record building highly available, distributed systems at scale, language-agnostic, strong opinions on correctness and maintainability.
- Hands-on leadership : You write code, review architecture, and arent just in meetings.
- System design : Distributed systems, event-driven architectures, microservices, and API design at scale.
- Data architecture : PostgreSQL and beyond, caching strategies, data pipelines, query optimisation.
- People management : Proven experience hiring, mentoring, setting technical direction, and building high-performance teams.
- High-stakes integrations : Banks, payment networks, brokerages, or regulatory systems.
- Scaling experience : Youve been through hypergrowth and know what breaks.
- Communication : Write clearly, present trade-offs precisely, align technical and non-technical stakeholders.
GOOD TO HAVE :
- Proficiency in Python, Golang, or Node.js.
- Experience in fintech or compliance-heavy domains (KYC, AML, cross-border payments).
- Prior exposure to financial infrastructure - core banking integrations, brokerage APIs, or payment network architecture.
- Experience as a founding or early engineer at a high-growth startup.
QUALIFICATIONS :
- 8+ years of engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a Staff, Principal, or equivalent role that included people management.
- Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent - strong fundamentals in algorithms, systems, and distributed computing.
- A portfolio of architectural decisions and team-building work you can speak to in depth.
Skills
System Design, Python, Backend Architecture, PostgreSQL, Algorithm, Distributed Systems