Lead Backend Engineer

As a Lead Backend Engineer at Enigmatic Smile, you'll be responsible for guiding the technical direction of our backend services, mentoring engineers, and delivering high-quality, scalable, secure software that supports millions of global customers. You'll work closely with engineering managers, product teams, and cross-functional stakeholders to architect robust systems, lead complex initiatives, and elevate engineering standards across the organisation. Security is a core requirement for Enigmatic Smile, so adherence to PCI and ISO policies is a must for all engineering roles. What do we do? Enigmatic Smile is a fintech scale-up. We're a distributed team with headquarters in Glasgow, Scotland. Our customers are worldwide, and each region has its own requirements that we support through our platform. We're a visionary company enabling customers, retailers, rewards publishers and banks around the world to improve customer experiences. Who are we looking for? You're someone who brings leadership, ownership, and strong technical judgement to everything you build. You're proactive, collaborative, and confident making architectural decisions that impact multiple teams. You're comfortable mentoring developers, managing priorities, and championing engineering best practices. Our way of working We're a distributed team; the primary engineering locations are the UK and Portugal. Our wider team spans multiple continents. Day-to-day work is mostly in European time zones (GMT ±2). Our working language is English. This role is primarily remote, with occasional travel/office visits. Objectives of this role

• Lead the delivery of high-quality backend software that is scalable, performant, and secure
• Drive architectural design discussions across multiple systems and teams
• Line management and mentorship of backend engineers through code reviews, pairing, and coaching
• Shape engineering standards, processes, and best practices
• Work with other senior engineers and product teams to ensure solutions are robust, maintainable, and compliant with PCI/ISO requirements
• Support the QA team and contribute to automated testing strategies
• Contribute to planning and participate in project management ceremonies
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver business-critical features end-to-end

Responsibilities

• Architect and build backend services and APIs powering our global fintech platform
• Own complex technical projects from design through to deployment
• Improve system stability, reliability, and observability across services
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues
• Advocate for performance optimisation, scalability and security improvements
• Ensure adherence to internal engineering policies, coding standards, and compliance frameworks
• Work closely with DevOps engineers to enhance CI/CD pipelines and production infrastructure
• Contribute to long-term technical strategy and system roadmaps

Provide leadership within the backend engineering group, helping shape culture and engineering excellence Requirements

• Extensive experience in backend engineering with PHP as a primary language (Laravel or similar frameworks)
• Strong knowledge of modern development tooling, testing methodologies, and CI/CD pipelines
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices, caching, queues, and high-throughput API design
• Experience with Docker, Git/GitHub workflows, and modern cloud environments
• Strong database experience (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB or Document-based DBs)
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to debug complex issues across systems
• Ability to prioritise, communicate clearly, and lead delivery in a fast-moving environment
• Understanding of secure development practices, PCI-DSS, and ISO standards (beneficial)

Desirable experience

• Experience with Phalcon framework
• Experience or strong interest in Go or Rust
• Experience with message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SNS/SQS, etc.)
• Experience with high-scale, event-driven architectures
• Experience with performance profiling and optimisation
• Experience mentoring or managing other developers

Benefits As a scaling company, our benefits are evolving. As a minimum, you can expect:

• Salary: £75,000+ DOE
• Flexible working hours and ability to work abroad
• Collaborative, security-first engineering culture
• Professional development and certification support
• 28 days holiday + local bank holidays
• Private Medical insurance + cover for dependants (Vitality)