Founding Backend Engineer at AURORA

London, England, United Kingdom -

Full Time

Start Date

Immediate

Expiry Date

25 Apr, 26

Salary

160000.0

Posted On

25 Jan, 26

Experience

5 year(s) or above

Remote Job

Yes

Telecommute

Yes

Sponsor Visa

Skills

Python, Django, SQL, Cloud Infrastructure, GCP, Infrastructure as Code, API Development, Background Processing, Data Pipelines, Debugging, Incident Resolution, Collaboration, Secure Coding, Performance Tuning, Observability, Trade-offs

Industry

technology;Information and Internet

Description

London, UK Salary: £150,000 - £160,000 Equity: 1–1.5% In-person, with flexible remote days About Aurora Aurora is a digital-first lifestyle management platform built for the world’s highest-performing individuals and organizations. Our members include tier-1 founders, executives, athletes, and families who delegate complex, ongoing needs across travel, dining, experiences, luxury purchases, and health. The product is mobile-first, conversational, proactive, and available 24/7 globally. Members use Aurora multiple times per day, often for time-sensitive, high-stakes decisions. As a result, the backend is mission-critical: orchestration, data quality, reliability, and speed directly determine the quality of the member experience. We benefit from high-frequency, conversational feedback, which we use to continuously refine and optimize the system. Agentify premium lifestyle commerce represents a $10bn+ opportunity. Legacy concierges, travel managers and lifestyle management services rely on outdated CRMs and fragmented, siloed communication channels, failing to meet the expectations and needs of a new generation of high-profile consumers. Aurora is a digital-first, multi-modal, multi-party platform that intelligently combines automation with expert human curators, each deployed at points of maximum leverage. The result of our work is exceptional early traction: 51% DAU, 95% WAU, and transaction volume and member spend that have already outperformed industry benchmarks by 5× within our first three months. Aurora is backed and chaired by Alex Macdonald, the most successful founder in this category. His insight and network provide a meaningful advantage as we scale. So far, we’ve: Raised $5M from experienced operators and tier-1 investors Built a product with industry leading engagement from paying customers Collected a large, proprietary set of user context (calendars, preferences, health signals) that powers proactive features We’re now expanding the engineering team as we scale the product and the member base. We have an in-person culture, building Aurora from our offices in London, New York, and Los Angeles. Our entire engineering team works in person, 5 days a week, out of our London office in Belgravia. We also offer 15 flexible remote days per year. The role We’re hiring a highly ambitious Founding Backend Engineer to work closely alongside our CTO and core engineering team to build and evolve Aurora’s backend systems. You’ll work with the founders, product, and other engineers to design and implement the core infrastructure behind the product. This includes APIs, background processing, agent orchestration, and data pipelines that support proactive, AI-driven behavior. This is a hands-on role with a high level of ownership. You’ll be responsible for taking features from idea to production and for keeping the system reliable as usage grows. You’ll report directly to the CTO. Over time, your role can grow into a broader technical or leadership position as the company scales. We ship high-polish, high-leverage products to our discerning customer base. We are urgent with our inputs and pragmatic with our outputs. Many of our early team have ambitions to be founders in the future - we view Aurora as a high-performance startup academy, where you will personally drive the evolution of a high-growth product from its earliest stages. Join us. What you’ll do Design and build backend services and APIs using Python and Django Own features end to end, from initial design to production rollout Maintain and evolve background processing, agent orchestration, and LLM integrations Work with context-heavy data pipelines and RAG-style systems Operate and improve cloud infrastructure on GCP Improve performance across SQL queries, background jobs, and API endpoints Debug production issues and lead incident resolution Implement secure coding practices and support compliance efforts Collaborate closely with product, curators, and frontend/mobile engineers Review code and help raise the overall technical bar What we’re looking for Experience 5+ years building and operating production backend systems Strong, hands-on experience with Python and Django Backend fundamentals Deep familiarity with Django and DRF, including common pitfalls Strong SQL skills and experience with schema design and performance tuning Experience with background job systems (ideally Celery) Comfort designing reliable, observable systems Infrastructure Experience running cloud-native systems, ideally on GCP Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code, preferably Terraform Experience operating services in production, not just building them Product mindset You care about how systems are used, not just how they’re built You think in terms of reliability, latency, and failure modes You’re comfortable making trade-offs and explaining them clearly Collaboration Able to work closely and in-person with product, design, and other engineers Clear communicator who takes ownership and follows things through Nice to have Experience working with LLMs or AI infrastructure Exposure to agent-based systems or RAG pipelines Familiarity with compliance frameworks (SOC2, PCI DSS, ISO 27001) Basic understanding of frontend or mobile stacks (Flutter, Vue) $2,000 Tech & Education budget Complimentary Oura ring or Whoop Complimentary longevity testing subscription Lifestyle perks, events, and access opportunities Full health benefits; 90% coverage, including full dental & vision Complimentary dinners and evening transport 15 Flexible remote days per year

Responsibilities

Design and build backend services and APIs, owning features from initial design to production rollout. Maintain and evolve background processing and agent orchestration while collaborating closely with product and engineering teams.