Software Engineer, Backend Developer, Python

About the role

Pay Range: £75k-£200k (salary + equity), based in London, UK.

We are hiring a Software Engineer to join Squid as one of our first engineers.

You will work closely with the founders and early engineering team to build production software for grid operators. This is a broad software engineering role spanning backend systems, frontend products, data-intensive applications, cloud infrastructure and applied AI.

You will help turn complex engineering workflows into reliable, intuitive software used by planners, operators and engineers. This is a high-ownership role based in our central London office, with the opportunity to shape the product, technical architecture and engineering culture from an early stage.

• Build and ship production software across backend services, frontend applications and cloud infrastructure.
• Design APIs, data models and product interfaces for complex, data-heavy workflows.
• Develop tools for loading, validating, comparing, visualising and explaining technical datasets.
• Build reliable systems for versioning, collaboration, approvals and auditability.
• Integrate AI models and agents into practical, human-in-the-loop product workflows.
• Create benchmarks and evaluation tools for testing AI systems on real customer tasks.
• Improve system performance, reliability, security and developer experience.
• Work directly with customers to understand problems, test solutions and improve the product.
• Use modern AI development tools to prototype, test and ship software quickly.

You do not need to meet every requirement. We are looking for strong, product-minded software engineers who are comfortable working across a broad technical surface area.

You may be a strong fit if you have:

• Professional software engineering experience building and maintaining production systems.
• Experience with Python, Type Script, React, Postgres, APIs, cloud infrastructure or data pipelines.
• Experience with Columnar storage, Relational DB’s, Object stores.
• Experience working across multiple parts of a software stack rather than within one narrow specialism.
• Strong product judgement and the ability to turn unclear, real-world problems into practical software.
• Experience designing reliable systems for complex or data-intensive workflows.
• An interest in applied AI, model evaluation, agent systems and AI-assisted software development.
• The ability to communicate clearly and work directly with technical customers.
• High ownership, curiosity and a willingness to learn quickly.

Experience with developer tools, data visualisation, geospatial products, collaborative software, workflow engines, technical computing or regulated industries would be valuable, but is not required.