Senior Backend

Type: Part-Time - Project-Based work

RightShop is building the world's most trusted engine of transparent wellness.

We're looking for a Backend Engineer with a systems thinker mindset. Someone who understands how and why data flows, where bottlenecks occur, and how to build reliable solutions. This is not a "just code what's asked" role, ideally you'll help shape the architecture, challenge assumptions, and propose alternative ways of doing things.

You'll be working on the backbone of RightLabs: APIs, data pipelines, integrations, and infrastructure that power our consumer and partner experiences. Expect variety - flexibility and creativity are winning attributes. Some days it's search and vector ranking, other days it's tuning dashboards and securing PII.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and maintain backend components, APIs, and integrations.
• Help architect data flows across PostgreSQL, key-value stores, caches, and object storage.
• Implement secure authentication/authorisation (Auth0, OAuth2, OIDC, JWT).
• Support search/vector search/ranking and external API integrations (OpenAI, Azure, etc.).
• Set up monitoring and observability (OpenTelemetry, dashboards, SLOs).
• Remain aware of and build for data regulations (GDPR and others).
• Containerise solutions for scalability and compute flexibility (Docker/K8s/serverless,CDNs/WAFs)
• Write adapters, contract tests, and manage schema diffs for evolving systems.
• Collaborate across teams - tech and non-tech - find gaps, ask questions, and make suggestions.
• Help design and implement the RightScore algorithm, combining ingredient databases, human behaviour patterns, and ethical/product metadata into transparent scoring.
• Build and optimise logic layers, ranking systems, and cross-referencing pipelines that feed into consumer-facing products.
• Work with vector search, embeddings, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for product intelligence.
• Support the development of AI-powered interfaces (chat and recommendation layers) by shaping the backend that feeds them.
• Collaborate with product and science leads to translate wellness logic into robust, explainable models.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in backend engineering and system architecture.
• Strong grasp of data flows, infrastructure, and integration patterns.
• Proficiency with REST APIs, backend/frontend integration, and secrets hygiene.
• Can handle PostgreSQL, caching, object storage, and streaming systems.
• Experience with containerisation, serverless environments, CDNs, and WAFs.
• Familiarity with hybrid/vector search and ranking approaches.
• Working knowledge of PII/PHI/GDPR handling in production systems.
• Experience with data modelling, ML pipelines, or applied machine learning in production systems.
• Understanding of ranking, scoring, or recommendation systems is a plus.
• Familiarity with LLM integrations, embeddings, or search-driven AI is desirable
• Analytical thinker who can work independently and thrives on collaboration.
• Curiosity and courage to ask "why," not just "how"
• Clear English communication, written and verbal
• Be able to work across time zones with UK

Why Join Us?

• Be part of a mission-driven team redefining consumer wellness.
• Build with pragmatic application of leading-edge AI and search technologies.
• Help design and shape backend systems from the ground up.