[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer @Natter

Role Description

This is one of the most senior technical roles at Natter. You’ll be accountable for the technical direction of our platform: what we build on, how it scales, and how we get there without slowing down. You’ll join a strong engineering team and work closely with product and engineering leadership.

We’re hiring at Staff or Principal level. The level is set at offer, based on the scope you’ve demonstrably operated at.

This role is for engineers who have already set technical direction for a platform or organisation, designed systems that others build on for years, and made a whole engineering team measurably better. This isn’t a stepping stone into Staff, and it is not an architecture role detached from code. You’ll be among the strongest hands-on engineers on the team, and you’ll be expected to prove it.

What You’ll Own

• Technical strategy: Help define the multi-year technical direction for the platform, tie it to business outcomes, and turn it into a roadmap the team can execute against.
• The hardest systems: Personally lead the design of our most critical and highest-risk systems, such as our AI conversation pipeline, data architecture, and multi-tenant platform, from first principles through to production at scale.
• The highest-stakes decisions: Make and defend the decisions that are expensive to reverse, including build vs. buy, data models, service boundaries, and platform choices.
• Engineering standards: Own the bar for reliability, security, observability, performance, and cost across the entire platform, and hold the team to it.
• The engineering organisation: Contribute to how we hire, level, and grow engineers. Mentor senior engineers into Staff-level contributors, and own the technical hiring bar.
• Product direction: Be a genuine partner to product and engineering leadership. Bring technical insight that improves what we build.
• Enterprise trust: Be the technical face of Natter for our largest clients in security reviews, architecture deep dives, and high-stakes incidents.
• Code: Stay hands-on in the critical path. Build prototypes to de-risk decisions, code the hardest pieces yourself, and be the person the team turns to when something is badly broken.

Qualifications

• Operated at Staff level or above.
• Set technical direction that stuck.
• Designed systems at real scale, and lived with them.
• Led through serious incidents.
• Made other engineers better at scale.
• Exceptional written communication.
• Still a top-tier hands-on engineer.
• Deep AWS and infrastructure experience.

Requirements

• Built and operated AI/LLM-powered products in production.
• Enterprise B2B SaaS at scale: multi-tenancy, SSO, data isolation, and compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR).
• Event-driven and streaming architectures (e.g. Kafka) in production.
• Took a platform and engineering team through a rapid growth phase at a startup.
• Public technical work, such as talks, writing, or meaningful open-source contributions.

Benefits

• Top-of-market Staff+ salary, depending on level and significant equity.
• Direct influence on the technical direction of the company, working alongside the CEO and leadership team.
• Remote-first working, with a private office in Temple/Strand, London for collaboration and team lunches.
• Quarterly international team offsites.
• 6 weeks paid annual leave.

The Process

• Technical leadership conversation with Head of Engineering (45 mins): your scope, your impact, and how you operate.
• Engineering conversation with one of our engineers: your way of working, stack, interests.
• Take home assignment (1.5 hours): Prove that you can turn in high caliber work.
• Deep dive (1.5 hours): a deep-dive walkthrough of a system you led.
• Cross-functional panel (1 hour) with product leadership: strategy, influence, and disagreement.
• Final conversation with the CEO, plus references.