Lead Software Engineer, back end (L5/6)

From your everyday PowerPoint presentations to Hollywood movies, AI will transform the way we create and consume content. Today, people want to watch and listen, not read — both at home and at work. If you’re reading this and nodding, check out our brand video.

Despite the clear preference for video, communication and knowledge sharing in the business environment are still dominated by text, largely because high-quality video production remains complex and challenging to scale—until now….

We're on a mission to make video easy for everyone. Born in an AI lab, our AI video communications platform simplifies the entire video production process, making it easy for everyone, regardless of skill level, to create, collaborate, and share high-quality videos. Whether it's for delivering essential training to employees and customers or marketing products and services, Synthesia enables large organizations to communicate and share knowledge through video quickly and efficiently. We’re trusted by leading brands such as Heineken, Zoom, Xerox, McDonald’s and more. Read stories from happy customers and what 1,200+ people say on G2.

In February 2024, G2 named us as the fastest growing company in the world. Today, we're at a $2.1bn valuation and we recently raised our Series D. This brings our total funding to over $330M from top-tier investors, including Accel, Nvidia, Kleiner Perkins, Google and top founders and operators including Stripe, Datadog, Miro, Webflow, and Facebook.

• You will work end-to-end, contributing to our client application written in React and our monolithic backend written in Python, and managing the safe release of your features to our customer base.
• You will have sole ownership of projects that span months, requiring you to have the ability to break a problem down into small steps that can be delivered and validated iteratively.
• You will work directly with the product manager responsible for your project, meaning that you will be expected to ideate and focus on the commercial problem that you're solving, and you will have the opportunity to shape the direction of the product.
• You will evaluate your own work, leveraging our data pipeline and frameworks that we have established to understand the impact your features have on our commercial objectives and pivoting where necessary.
• You will consider the long-term direction of the team, making sure that we are developing the engineering capabilities that will allow us to stay ahead of the challenges we are likely to encounter in 6-12 months' time.

• At least seven (7) years of experience as a software engineer, at least 3 on the senior/lead level.
• You have experience in a high-performing engineering team that is operating at scale. This could come from a scale-up environment or a more established organization recognised for building and shipping with a great engineering culture.
• An ability to work across the stack, with deep knowledge on server side and all things back end related. BE only experience is OK if you are happy to occasionally help out with FE.
• Relevant engineering experience for a team building an enterprise-grade SaaS product delivering AI-powered video generation; billing systems, experimentation platforms, video delivery systems, online editors, real-time collaboration and so on.
• Strong alignment with commercial success.
• Previous leadership experience of smaller teams is a plus. 

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,

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.

We’re trusted by leading brands such as Heineken, Zoom, Xerox, McDonald’s and more. Read stories from happy customers and what 1,200+ people say on G2.

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.

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.

1. 30-40min call with our Technical Recruiter
2. 45min call with an Engineering Manager about your past projects
3. 90min Live Coding interview, a collaboration exercise with our Engineer (not Leetcode style)
4. 60min System Design, technical discussion usually about a real problem we had in production
5. 45min 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. The process does not need to take long - we can be done in seven working days.

• This is a remote role from an EU country, UK or Switzerland. 
• The salary starts at EUR/GBP/CHF 100.000 base + stock option plan.
• 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.