The Staff Backend Engineer is responsible for technical vision, strategy, and execution, focusing on architecture, project delivery, and team collaboration to improve system performance and reliability.
About Fresha
Fresha is the leading marketplace platform for beauty & wellness trusted by millions of consumers and businesses worldwide. Fresha is used by 130,000+ businesses and 450,000+ stylists and professionals worldwide, processing over 1 billion appointments to date.
The company is headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with 15 global offices located across North America, EMEA and APAC.
Fresha allows consumers to discover, book and pay for beauty and wellness appointments with local businesses via its marketplace, while beauty and wellness businesses and professionals use an all-in-one platform to manage their entire operations with an intuitive business software and financial technology solutions.
Fresha’s ecosystem gives merchants everything they need to run their business seamlessly by facilitating appointment bookings, point-of-sale, customer records management, marketing automation, loyalty, beauty products inventory and team management.
The consumer marketplace unlocks revenue potential for partner businesses by leveraging the power of online bookings and automated marketing through mobile apps and advanced integrations with major tech brands including Instagram, Facebook and Google
Role Overview
At Fresha, we believe AI is a force multiplier for feature delivery, not just a coding assistant. We provide every engineer with top-tier tooling (Claude, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) to strip away technical toil—so you can focus your energy on shipping high-impact product features. We value engineers who know how to leverage these tools to drive momentum within our 6-week cycles, accelerating the journey from concept to code while maintaining the deep technical judgment to verify, secure, and own the final user experience.
Given our exciting and progressive growth plans, we are looking for an exceptional Senior Staff Backend Engineer to come join our global business.
Reporting directly to the Head of Engineering for a tribe, and working with key stakeholders, you will be accountable for technical vision, strategy and execution in your team and proactively manage technical risks at Fresha.
This is a great opportunity for someone looking to work in a fast-paced and changing environment, who likes to work autonomously, enjoys a challenge and wants to make an impact.
To foster a collaborative environment that thrives on face-to-face interactions and teamwork, all Fresha employees work from our dog friendly office four days per week, with the flexibility to work remotely one day each week. London office: The Bower, 207, 211 Old St, London EC1V 9NR
What you will be doing
- Technical - his is a heavily technical role, hands-on coding skills are expected. It’s not a management role
- Leadership - Own and deliver cross team and cross tribal technical initiatives
- Architectural - Take ownership of architecture for a tribe
- Guidance - Sought out for technical guidance; anticipating technical issues at the product level and making architectural and design decisions to avoid them
- Improvements - Create sweeping improvements in stability, performance and scalability across major business-critical systems
- Delivery - Ensure timely delivery of your teams’ projects, which will ultimately have a tangible impact on Fresha’s success
- Lead-by-example - Make sure your team follows our engineering practices by leading from the front
- Collaboration - Work closely with diverse functions within the team across Product, Design, Data and QA and make sure that the team has clear goals and regularly delivers value to our users
- Learning - Facilitate continuous learning and improvement for your team
- Standards - Make sure that the systems your team owns meet Fresha quality, reliability and scalability standards
- Innovative - You will be anticipating broad technical changes and ensuring Fresha is always ahead of the curve
- Strategic - Recognising and making trade-offs with respect to the whole system. You understand deeply the entire architecture for a major part of our business and you’re able to articulate clearly the scaling and reliability limits of that area.
- Multiplier - Primarily acting as a multiplier by building systems, authoring tools or introducing policies or patterns that raise the level of productivity of the entire org
- Communication - Communicating the awesomeness of Fresha in different Tech communities externally via talks and blog posts, identifying areas that we can share effectively with the outside world, guiding the creation of content and communication around those areas. Leading conversations internally about the direction of major areas of technology, driving wide-team consensus to the adoption of this direction and using this direction to inspire engineers
This list is not exhaustive and there may be other activities you are required to deliver.
What we are looking for
- AI-Augmented Workflow: You have deep experience building and interacting with AI agents, using them to amplify your output to 5x that of manual coding. You are able to integrate agents into our workflow while strictly adhering to our architecture and security standards, taking full accountability for ensuring all generated code meets the quality expectations of a Senior Engineer.
- Delivery - You have consistently delivered large systems involving one or more teams’ contributions on time at a high level of quality
- Problem-solving - You’ve had to quickly break down complex problems into potential solutions, knowns, and unknowns, in order to get a solid resolution faster
- Debugging - You’re capable of debugging the hairiest problems that the team encounters
- Strategy - Played a key role in developing multi-year technology strategy for complete and critical areas of the business that encompass multiple systems and teams
- Adaptability - You have created an architecture that enables many potential futures without knowing exactly what the future is
- Relationships - Ability to interact with people from across the business and build strong relationships, including the ability to effectively influence upwards
- Facilitation - Listened and guided debates to help reach consensus; once a decision is made clearly communicate the decision(s) back
- Planning - Set short to medium-term strategic technical direction, able to look ahead 6-12 months identify areas of greatest need and create plans to improve them
- Mentorship - You’re seen as a role model and mentor to every technical member of the team
- Contribution - Recognised as a prolific contributor to core and side projects
- Simplification - Consistently reduced the complexity of projects, services, and processes to get more done with less work
- Architecture - Shaped broad architecture; shipped multiple large services, complex libraries or major pieces of infrastructure
- Impact - Made obvious positive impact on an entire company’s technical trajectory
- Team-player - Happy to roll sleeves up and assist the team when required (team player)
- Proactive - Self-starter and proactive approach
- Adaptive - Comfortable working in a fast-paced and changing environment
At Fresha, we value passion and potential as much as specific skills. If you're enthusiastic and eager to learn, we encourage you to apply, even if you don't meet every listed requirement. We believe in fostering growth and providing the support needed for you to excel in your role.
Interview Process
- Screen Stage - Video-call with a member from the Talent Team (45-60min)
- 1st Stage - Technical video/In-person interview with the team (60min)
- 2nd Stage - Technical Video/In-person interview with Team (up to 2 hours)
- Final Stage - Video interview with Head of Engineering / VP of Engineering /CTO (60min)
We aim to complete the entire interview process and deliver feedback within 4 weeks.
Every job application received is reviewed manually by our talent team. While we strive to assess applications within 7 days, the sheer volume of talented individuals expressing interest may occasionally extend this timeframe
Inclusive workforce
At Fresha, we are creating a culture where individuals of all backgrounds feel comfortable.
We want all Fresha people to feel included and truly empowered to contribute fully to our vision and goals. Everyone who applies will receive fair consideration for employment.
We do not discriminate based on race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, gender identity, national origin, disability, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics in the location in which the candidate is applying.
If you have any accessibility requirements that would make you more comfortable during the interview process and/or once you join, please let us know so that we can support you.
Top Skills
Backend Development
Fresha London, England Office
London, United Kingdom, EC2A 2 AP
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