The role
This is a hands-on senior engineering role. Most of your time goes into designing, building and running production systems. You'll own features and components end to end, from shaping the design to operating it in production, and you'll have the autonomy to make the technical calls within your scope without checking in on every decision. You'll work closely with the Head of Engineering, contribute to the discussions on how things get built, help unblock teammates when they're stuck, and take your share when something is on fire.
What we need from you
8+ years building and operating backend/data systems
Strong object-oriented engineering in production systems: clean design, testable code, sound abstractions, with Python and Java preferred
Hands-on cloud experience on GCP or AWS: you've deployed and experimented with at least one of them
Solid data and infrastructure fundamentals: relational databases, message queuing systems, containerisation, and batch data pipelines in production
CI/CD implementation: you've built and maintained pipelines that test, build and deploy services to production, ideally with GitLab CI/CD
Hands-on LLM engineering: you've shipped something with an LLM in the loop and can talk about evaluation, cost control, tool/prompt design and failure modes, not just called an API
Infrastructure as code: basic knowledge of Terraform or an equivalent. You can read, modify and safely apply existing infrastructure code to make the changes your services need
Operational maturity: observability, incident handling, security fundamentals (auth, network boundaries, secrets) in regulated or client-facing environments
Independent ownership: you can take a loosely defined problem, break it into well-scoped pieces, estimate it and deliver it to production without step-by-step direction
Availability to travel to San Francisco for stays of one to two months, returning as needed
Nice to have
Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, LiteLLM/Langfuse, LangGraph or similar agent frameworks
AI-assisted development workflows (Claude Code, AI code review) as part of your daily practice
Infrastructure as code (Terraform or equivalent)
Financial-services or payments domain exposure
Experience mentoring or pairing with junior engineers
Start-up / scale-up experience
How we work
Small team, high trust: you'll talk to the CEO as easily as to the person sitting next to you
Open to experimenting with new technologies: if you can show it solves a real problem, you'll get the room to try it
Relaxed, low-ego environment: we care about the work being good, not about hierarchy or hours at a desk
Room to shape how we build: our engineering practices are still being written, and you'll have a real say in them
About Opplane
Opplane specializes in providing advanced data-focused solutions for financial services, telecommunication, and reg-tech to accelerate their digital transformation journey. Opplane leadership team is comprised of Silicon Valley serial entrepreneurs and experienced executives. Its expertise comes from years of specific industry experience at some of the world's top companies, such as PayPal, Xerox Parc, Amazon, Wells Fargo, SoFi in the areas of product management, data technology, data governance, data privacy, security, machine learning, and risk management.
Why Opplane
🌍 Global & Multicultural – Diverse perspectives, global collaboration (US, Portugal, India and Singapore offices)
⚡ Startup Energy – Fast-moving, impact-driven environment
💪 Ownership Mindset – Engineers own what they build
🤝 Collaborative & Friendly – Open, curious, and supportive culture