Lead Backend Engineer

Job Description

Salary: £115,000 - £130,000

Must be based in the UK

Why Midnite? 

Midnite is a next-generation betting platform that is built for today’s fandom. We are a collective of engineers and designers who all share a passion for building the best sportsbook & casino experience possible, allowing our fans to feel closer to the games they love through the rush of winning money. 

Unlike the alternatives, Midnite doesn't feel like a website built two decades ago. Instead, it's a cutting-edge creation, designed and constructed from the ground up with the latest technologies. Crafting an experience that's truly intuitive, immersive, and immediately understandable is no walk in the park, but we thrive on the challenge. We believe we're on the brink of creating something truly awesome.

What will you do?

We’re looking for an experienced Lead Platform Software Engineer to ensure Midnite is reliable, performant, and always available, no matter the time of day. You’ll play a key role in shaping the evolution of our core platform, setting engineering standards, and driving improvements across our infrastructure and backend systems.

You’ll work closely with our Head Of Platform Engineering and the UK Platform team, taking ownership of critical systems design, reliability engineering, and deployment practices. This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role where you’ll be the person the team relies on when things break, and the person they trust when things need to scale or improve.

This is a hands-on leadership role. Expect to spend most of your time in the code, working alongside the team to ship production changes. You’ll also manage a small team of engineers, helping set the direction, coaching them day-to-day, and creating a high-performing, engineering-led culture. Expect meaningful ownership and to be challenged and rewarded in equal measure.

Technical

Our platform is primarily built in Python and hosted on AWS, incorporating Flask, Pytest, Mypy, Docker, PostgreSQL, SQS, S3, and Terraform. We deploy daily.

As a Lead Platform Engineer, you will:

• Own and drive architectural decisions across the platform, focusing on uptime, resilience, scalability, and performance.
• Lead technical design for complex cross-team projects, especially those touching core infrastructure or platform reliability.
• Identify and drive improvements in deployment pipelines, observability, performance monitoring, and systems architecture.
• Anticipate failure points, plan for scaling, and ensure the platform remains robust as usage grows.
• Guide the adoption of best practices in platform engineering, reliability, testing, and operational excellence.
• Work closely with partners and vendors to integrate their products into our systems in a safe, repeatable, and scalable way.
• Support senior engineers in unblocking cross-team issues, acting as the technical escalation point.
• You’ll regularly contribute code, reviews, and production changes as part of the team’s daily delivery.

Collaboration & Leadership

You'll collaborate with product, design, backend, frontend, and trading teams to ensure platform decisions support Midnite’s ambitions.

In this role, you will:

• Manage and develop a small team of engineers, creating the environment for them to perform at a high level.
• Mentor engineers across the broader team, helping them improve technical depth, delivery capability, and decision making.
• Facilitate technical discussions and planning sessions, ensuring clarity, alignment, and pragmatic decision-making.
• Delegate effectively, enabling others to move fast while ensuring engineering standards remain high.
• Drive accountability and ownership across the Platform team, defining how we build, deploy, and maintain our systems.
• Play a key role in hiring by running technical interviews and shaping the make-up of the Platform function.
• Strengthen the culture across engineering, promoting a focus on reliability, quality, and continuous improvement.

We care deeply about developer productivity and efficiency, so we use tools that support that — Linear, Notion, Slack, and a modern Mac-based setup.

Expectations

• 7+ years of engineering experience with deep expertise in Python and cloud-based systems.
• Proven experience leading or managing engineers in a platform, backend, or infrastructure-focused role.
• Strong background in building resilient, scalable, and high-performance distributed systems.
• Ability to break down ambiguous and complex problems into clear plans and well-defined milestones.
• Demonstrated impact improving reliability, performance, and the developer experience.
• Hands-on technical leadership — able to dive into code and architecture while guiding others.
• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Experience integrating third-party systems at scale and acting as the technical lead for those relationships.
• Familiarity with modern delivery practices and a deep appreciation for quality, testing, and stability.

Benefits

What’s in it for you:

• Shape our future: Play a key role in our team's success, where your voice matters, and you'll have a direct impact on shaping Midnite's future.
• Connect and unwind: Take part in our quarterly gatherings where our community comes together to bond and have fun.
• Comprehensive health coverage: Look after your well-being with our outstanding zero-excess health insurance plan, which includes optical and dental coverage.
• Income Protection: A great plan for looking after your income and providing peace of mind for you and your loved ones.
• Simplify life: Take advantage of our nursery salary sacrifice scheme, allowing you to conveniently pay your child's nursery fees straight from your paycheck.
• Work-life balance: Enjoy 25 paid holidays a year, plus generous paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave, supporting you during life's most important moments.
• Productive home office: We provide everything you need for a comfortable and ergonomic home setup, ensuring you're as productive as possible.
• Flexible working: We embrace flexible working, allowing you to adjust your schedule when life's unexpected moments arise.​
• Latest tech made easy: With our salary sacrifice schemes, you can upgrade to the latest gadgets, household items, and mobile tech without the upfront cost.
• Exclusive perks: Enjoy a wide range of discounts on retailers, groceries, and subscriptions, making life a little more affordable.
• Grow with us: Expand your skills through internal and external learning opportunities while benefiting from access to mentorship programs that support your development.
• Transparent compensation: We provide competitive pay with clear team bandings and salary grids, ensuring that salary discussions are simple and fair. 
• Constructive feedback: We foster a transparent culture, encouraging individual feedback and review sessions to help everyone improve.

At Midnite, we’re committed to creating equal opportunities for everyone. We actively strive to build balanced teams that reflect the diversity of our communities, including ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, the LGBTQIA+ community, and all genders.

We aim to provide an inclusive and supportive interview experience for all candidates. If you require any reasonable adjustments, please let us know in advance so we can ensure you feel comfortable and set up for success.