(Senior or Staff) Backend Engineer, AI tooling
Synthesia · Zürich, Zurich · Berlin, State of Berlin · Munich, Bavaria · Copenhagen, Capital Region · Dublin, Leinster · Ljubljana, Ljubljana · Remote · United Kingdom · Europe · multi-country
Synthesia is the world’s leading AI video platform for business, used by over 90% of the Fortune 100. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in London, with offices and teams across Europe and the US.
As AI continues to shape the way we live and work, Synthesia develops products to enhance visual communication and enterprise skill development, helping people work better and stay at the center of successful organizations.
Following our recent Series E funding round, where we raised $200 million, our valuation stands at $4 billion. Our total funding exceeds $530 million from premier investors including Accel, NVentures (Nvidia's VC arm), Kleiner Perkins, GV, and Evantic Capital, alongside the founders and operators of Stripe, Datadog, Miro, and Webflow.
ABOUT THE ROLE
The Developer Platform team builds internal tools and platform that improve the velocity, quality and developer experience of Synthesia's engineering teams. They own developer productivity (from code commit to production), developer insights and SDLC metrics, developer infrastructure (CI/CD systems), AI-assisted QA/testing and AI-assisted development. AI Adoption has grown to 90%+ employees with 100%~ adoption in engineering in the last 8 months. You'll have a big surface area and real ownership from day one into making Synthesia's engineering go faster but with quality in this day and age of AI-driven development.
- You will work end-to-end owning the architectural decisions that govern how features are built, released safely to customers, and supported long-term. You'll mentor engineers and embed technical practice through code review and design partnership.
- You will lead projects that span quarters, breaking down complex problems into milestones that can be validated iteratively. You'll operate with high autonomy: defining success criteria, calling trade-offs, and knowing when to escalate to leadership.
- You will partner directly with leadership to shape the roadmap and technical strategy. You'll have the skills to push back on requirements, propose alternatives, and influence what we build and when.
- You will own the operational health of systems you build and you'll use data to drive decisions about iteration, maintenance, and deprecation.
- You will be accountable for the technical direction of your area. You'll anticipate 12+ month technical challenges, propose solutions that scale, and build the engineering capabilities that will let us execute ahead of the curve.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR:
- At least seven (7) years of experience as a software engineer, with at least 2-3 years working on senior/staff level
- Proven hands-on experience building and operating developer platforms, CI/CD systems, observability/metrics infrastructure, code quality automation, testing infrastructure and/or developer tooling.
- You have previously shipped infrastructure or tooling that measurably improved developer velocity or reduced cognitive load.
- Previous experience leading the adoption of new AI-powered developer tools or capabilities across an engineering organization.
- You have operated in a high-performing engineering organization (scale-up or established) where you've seen how infrastructure choices directly impact team velocity and product quality. You understand what it means to build for other engineers.
- Experience integrating third-party services (APIs, SaaS tools, external platforms) into internal systems, with attention to reliability, security, and user experience. You understand the operational constraints of running other people's code/services at scale.
- Clear understanding that platform and infrastructure work directly enables commercial outcomes.
- Previous experience owning large technical areas end-to-end.
WHY JOIN US?
We’re living the golden age of AI. The next decade will yield the next iconic companies, and we dare to say we have what it takes to become one. Here’s why,
OUR CULTURE
At Synthesia we’re passionate about building, not talking, planning or politicising. We strive to hire the smartest, kindest and most unrelenting people and let them do their best work without distractions. Our work principles serve as our charter for how we make decisions, give feedback and structure our work to empower everyone to go as fast as possible. You can find out more about these principles here. https://www.notion.so/How-we-work-at-Synthesia-f794caa72f8446efb6be22b551ce0fa2?pvs=21
SERVING 50,000+ CUSTOMERS (AND 90% OF THE FORTUNE 100)
We’re trusted by leading brands such as Heineken, Zoom, Xerox, McDonald’s and more. Read stories from happy customers https://www.synthesia.io/case-studies and what 1,200+ people say on G2 https://www.g2.com/products/synthesia/reviews#reviews.
PROPRIETARY AI TECHNOLOGY
Since 2017, we’ve been pioneering advancements in Generative AI. Our AI technology is built in-house, by a team of world-class AI researchers and engineers. Learn more about our AI Research Lab and the team behind. https://www.synthesia.io/research
AI SAFETY, ETHICS AND SECURITY
AI safety, ethics, and security are fundamental to our mission. While the full scope of Artificial Intelligence's impact on our society is still unfolding, our position is clear: People first. Always. Learn more about our commitments to AI Ethics, Safety & Security https://www.synthesia.io/ethics.
THE HIRING PROCESS:
1. 30-40min call with our Technical Recruiter
2. 45min call with an Engineering Manager about your past projects
3. 90min Product Discovery/Implementation, a collaboration exercise with our Engineer (not Leetcode style, in Python).
4. 60min System Design, technical discussion usually about a real problem we had in production.
5. 60min call with leadership, focus on examples of collaboration, growth and going through details of your future team.
You can find more details on what to expect and how to prepare HERE https://synthesia.notion.site/How-should-I-prepare-for-my-Synthesia-Engineering-interviews-25cc16d22bf180cb9567d09694b8907c. The pace of the process depends on your availability.
OTHER IMPORTANT INFO:
- Our preference is for this role to based either in-office or remote in the following locations: UK, Germany, Switzerland or Ireland.
We may also be able to support remote workers in other locations across Europe subject to compliance and right to work checks.
- The salary starts at EUR/GBP/CHF 130.000 base + equity (RSUs).
- This is full-time employment only - no contractors possible - usually through OysterHR.
- Everyone at Synthesia gets 25 days of leave + local holidays (no extra paid or unpaid leave possible).
- We only sponsor VISA if you are in the UK/EU country already and need support - we do not relocate people.