Digital Waffle
Software Engineer
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Role: Lead Backend Engineer
Salary: Up to £70k depending on experience
Location: Birmingham, hybrid working, 2 to 3 days per week onsite
A growing technology business is hiring a Lead Software Engineer to take ownership of its backend engineering function and help shape the next phase of its platform.
This is a hands-on leadership role for someone with deep C++ experience who enjoys combining technical delivery with mentoring, architecture and modern AI adoption. You’ll work closely with Product, Front End and R&D teams to improve platform performance, engineering quality and development velocity.
What you'll be doing
- Lead the development and evolution of scalable backend systems and APIs.
- Take technical ownership of backend projects from planning through to production delivery.
- Work closely with Product Managers, Architects and Engineers to define technical requirements.
- Lead and mentor a team of backend engineers, supporting their development and technical progression.
- Drive improvements across architecture, performance, reliability and observability.
- Identify bottlenecks and optimise database queries, services and system performance.
- Evaluate and implement AI-powered tools to improve engineering productivity and software quality.
- Help shape the adoption of LLMs, AI-assisted development and modern AI engineering practices across the team.
- Lead sprint planning, stand-ups and retrospectives alongside Product and Delivery teams.
- Champion secure coding, testing, code review and engineering best practice.
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What you'll need
- Strong commercial experience as a Lead Backend Engineer, Senior Backend Engineer or similar technical leadership role.
- Expert-level C++ experience with strong knowledge of the standard library, STL containers and algorithms.
- Experience designing and maintaining scalable backend services and APIs.
- Strong understanding of database systems and performance optimisation.
- Previous experience leading, mentoring or coaching software engineers.
- Experience working within Agile engineering environments.
- Hands-on experience developing, integrating or deploying AI or Machine Learning-powered solutions.
- Familiarity with LLMs, AI-assisted development tools and modern AI frameworks.
- Understanding of AI architecture including prompt engineering, vector databases, RAG and AI service integration.
- Experience evaluating and introducing AI tools that improve developer productivity.
- Strong problem-solving skills with a proactive and pragmatic approach to engineering.
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Nice to have
- Experience contributing to hiring and onboarding technical teams.
- Exposure to hardware-integrated software, access control, security or workforce management platforms.
- Experience improving engineering observability, reliability and secure development practices.
This role would suit an experienced C++ engineer who wants to combine hands-on development with technical leadership and play a key role in introducing modern AI capabilities into an established engineering environment.
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