Lead Software Engineer - Backend | Python

Full time

ONSITE

Applied

AI is a pioneering AI technology company headquartered in Abu Dhabi, committed to innovation and excellence in artificial intelligence solutions in regulated industries such as healthcare, insurance, government, and financial services.

Opus is the world's first Knowledge Work AI platform. Built by Applied

AI to pioneer Supervised Automation, a human‑in‑the‑loop model where AI handles repetitive, structured tasks while human experts provide crucial oversight at defined intervals.

The platform uses its proprietary Large Work Model to generate and orchestrate outcome‑based workflows, enabling a dramatic reduction in the cost of knowledge work and allowing human talent to focus on high‑value, creative, and judgement‑intensive activities.

As a Lead Software Engineer, you will own significant work streams within the Opus platform, taking full technical accountability from architecture through to production deployment. You will lead a small, cross‑functional team of approximately four engineers — spanning backend and frontend disciplines — while remaining deeply hands‑on in the design, development, and review of complex backend systems.

This is a 70% technical, 30% leadership role suited to an engineer who wants to stay close to the code while growing their impact through others.

The ideal candidate brings 8–10+ years of software engineering experience, exceptional depth in Python and backend systems design, and a track record of leading engineers through complex, high‑stakes delivery. A grounding in strong software engineering fundamentals is essential; experience applying AI‑assisted development tools and workflows is a valued plus.

Own the end-to-end technical delivery of assigned platform work streams, from requirements and architecture through to deployment and post‑release iteration.

Lead systems design for complex, distributed, high‑throughput backend services, ensuring decisions are principled, scalable, and well‑documented.

Set and enforce architectural standards across your team, including API design, data modelling, service boundaries, and inter‑service communication patterns.

Provide technical direction and hands‑on contribution in equal measure — reviewing code, unblocking engineers, and writing production‑grade code yourself.

Identify and resolve systemic risks, technical debt, and performance bottlenecks proactively.

Design and build scalable Python microservices using event‑driven and asynchronous architectures.

Architect and implement high‑performance REST APIs using modern Python frameworks (FastAPI, Flask, or similar).

Lead the design of real‑time data streaming and messaging systems (Kafka, Rabbit

MQ, Redis Streams, or similar).

Oversee asynchronous task processing using distributed task queues (Celery, RQ, or similar).

Define and govern ETL workflows and data pipelines using orchestration tools such as Airflow, Prefect, or Dagster.

Drive database design and optimisation across relational (Postgre

SQL, MySQL) and No

SQL (Mongo

DB, Redis) systems for high‑throughput, mission‑critical workloads.

Champion observability, ensuring services are instrumented with appropriate logging, tracing, and monitoring.

Establish and uphold engineering standards for code quality, testing, and documentation across your team.

Lead code reviews with a focus on correctness, maintainability, and architectural integrity.

Apply and advocate for SOLID principles, domain‑driven design, and modular architecture practices.

Drive modernisation and refactoring efforts on legacy components where required.

Lead, mentor, and develop a team of c. four engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, rigour, and continuous improvement.

Conduct regular 1:1s, provide constructive feedback, and support the career growth of your direct reports.

Partner closely with product managers, frontend engineers, ML teams, and Dev Ops to deliver features end‑to‑end.

Communicate project status, risks, and technical decisions clearly to stakeholders and engineering leadership.

Champion CI/CD best practices and contribute to…