Lead Software Engineer - Backend | Python

Lead Software Engineer - Backend | Python

On-site | Abu Dhabi

AppliedAI is a pioneering AI technology company headquartered in Abu Dhabi, committed to innovation and excellence in artificial intelligence solutions in regulated industries such as healthcare, insurance, government, and financial services.

Opus is the world's first Knowledge Work AI platform. Built by AppliedAI to pioneer Supervised Automation, a human-in-the-loop model where AI handles repetitive, structured tasks while human experts provide crucial oversight at defined intervals.

The platform uses its proprietary Large Work Model to generate and orchestrate outcome-based workflows, enabling a dramatic reduction in the cost of knowledge work and allowing human talent to focus on high-value, creative, and judgement-intensive activities.

Position Overview:

This is a 70% technical, 30% leadership role suited to an engineer who wants to stay close to the code while growing their impact through others.

The ideal candidate brings 8–10+ years of software engineering experience, exceptional depth in Python and backend systems design, and a track record of leading engineers through complex, high-stakes delivery. A grounding in strong software engineering fundamentals is essential; experience applying AI-assisted development tools and workflows is a valued plus.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the end-to-end technical delivery of assigned platform workstreams, from requirements and architecture through to deployment and post-release iteration.

• Lead systems design for complex, distributed, high-throughput backend services, ensuring decisions are principled, scalable, and well-documented.

• Set and enforce architectural standards across your team, including API design, data modelling, service boundaries, and inter-service communication patterns.

• Provide technical direction and hands-on contribution in equal measure — reviewing code, unblocking engineers, and writing production-grade code yourself.

• Identify and resolve systemic risks, technical debt, and performance bottlenecks proactively.

Backend Engineering

• Design and build scalable Python microservices using event-driven and asynchronous architectures.

• Architect and implement high-performance REST APIs using modern Python frameworks (FastAPI, Flask, or similar).

• Lead the design of real-time data streaming and messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, Redis Streams, or similar).

• Oversee asynchronous task processing using distributed task queues (Celery, RQ, or similar).