Senior Backend Engineer

Collaborate across the team

• Work closely with ML researchers, product engineers and domain experts (materials scientists, hardware engineers) to understand their needs and translate them into robust backend solutions

• Contribute to architectural decisions and help shape the technical direction of the platform

• Share knowledge, mentor peers and help establish best practices as the team grows

What We’re Looking For

• Backend engineering experience with strong programming skills

• Proven experience designing, building and operating backend systems in production — APIs, data pipelines, event-driven architectures or similar

• Strong fundamentals in at least one backend language (e.g. Python, Go, Rust, Java/Kotlin) and comfort working across the stack when needed

• Experience with databases (relational and/or graph), message queues, caching layers and cloud infrastructure

• A track record of shipping and iterating on software that real users depend on, with a strong sense of what makes systems reliable and maintainable

• The ability to reason about system design, data modelling and engineering trade-offs — and to communicate these effectively

• An ability to debug complex distributed systems through meticulous attention to detail, structured investigation and carefully chosen instrumentation

• A genuine interest in building software that enables breakthrough scientific and industrial applications

• Upon reading Hamming's You and Your Research, you resonate with quotes such as:

  • "Yes, I would like to do first-class work"

  • "You should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it, so they will indeed say, 'Yes, I've stood on so and so's shoulders and I saw further.'"

  • "Instead of attacking isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an isolated problem except as characteristic of a class"

Bonus: Previous experience working in an AI/ML environment, familiarity with the workflows, tooling and pace of AI teams is a real advantage. Experience with graph databases, knowledge graphs or scientific data platforms. Experience with infrastructure-as-code, containerisation (Docker/Kubernetes) or CI/CD pipelines.

Orbital is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.