Software Engineer (UK - Non London)

Role summary:
A backend engineer who thrives in fast-growth environments, owns services end-to-end, and uses agentic development workflows to ship faster. Will work on the core applications powering the business.

Responsibilities:
Develop and own our core applications - CRM and finance services - for internal and external users.

Evaluation criteria (in priority order):

1. Fast-growth / high-performance startup or scaleup experience (highest weight)

• Has worked at a Series A/B (or comparable) startup through a period of rapid scaling, ideally not just a large, stable org.

• Comfortable with ambiguity, shifting priorities, and shipping under pressure without over-engineering.

• Signals: early/founding engineer roles, "first N engineers," ownership of significant surface area, demonstrable velocity. Be wary of CVs showing only big-company or agency/consultancy backgrounds.

2. Python / FastAPI (must-have)

• Strong, current production Python with FastAPI specifically. This is a hard requirement, not a nice-to-have.

• Signals: API design, async Python, building and maintaining services in production. Adjacent data/persistence experience (SQL, ORMs) a plus.

3. Strong agentic workflows / development optimisation

• Actively uses AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) as a core part of how they work, not as an occasional aid.

• Thinks about optimising their own and the team's development workflow - tooling, automation, spec-driven development.

• Signals: mentions of agentic/AI-native development, internal tooling, DX improvements, side projects built with agents, relevant OSS contributions (MCP, agent frameworks). Recency matters - this should be current, not aspirational.

Ownership of quality (baseline expectation):

• Used to owning their own testing and quality - writes and maintains their own tests, doesn't rely on a separate QA function to catch issues.

• Signals: testing discipline, test coverage ownership, "you build it, you run it" cultures.

Disqualifiers / flags:

• No FastAPI / weak Python.

• Based outside Europe.

• Purely frontend focus with no backend service ownership.

• No evidence of the scaleup or agentic criteria.

Levels is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of background, and we're committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.