Role: Backend engineer
Rate: IR35 Status yet to be determined
Location: Remote with occasional travel to London
Duration: 6-month initial contract
SC clearance required.
Backend Engineer (Contract)
About the Role
You are a systems thinker with deep experience in backend engineering and distributed
data infrastructure. You thrive in high-stakes environments, know how to ship reliable
code fast, and are pragmatic about trade-o=s. You understand the unique constraints of
experimental, edge-deployable systems, especially in air-gapped environments where
resilience and autonomy matter most.
This role focuses on building and adapting backend services to support experimental AI
systems deployed in sensitive Defence contexts. You will help create and manage
robust, portable pipelines for data ingestion, orchestration, model interaction, and
querying - all within a classified, compute-constrained environment. While our SaaS
platform handles production-scale workflows, this project demands thoughtful
downscaling and adaptation, not replication. You will work closely with a cross functional team of frontend engineers, data scientists, platform engineers, and external
partners.
What You'll Do
* Architect and implement backend services that support secure, air-gapped AI
deployments, with a focus on NLP-based tooling
* Develop pipelines for transcription ingestion and real-time analytical insight
generation
* Support graph and RAG-based inference layers using data from structured and
unstructured sources
* Build and expose APIs for frontend consumption, enabling natural-language
querying, dynamic visualisation, and reporting
* Ensure system portability via containerisation
* Collaborate closely with data scientists to integrate self-hosted LLMs and
analysis models into the backend infrastructure
* Work with platform engineers to tune deployments for hardware-limited
environments
What You Bring
* Strong experience building secure, scalable backend systems in Python and/or
Go
* Deep understanding of containerised services, particularly in Kubernetes
environments
* Practical knowledge of orchestration tools (e.g., Argo), message buses (Kafka),
and databases (especially Postgres), or equivalent technologies
* Experience working in air-gapped or secure environments, or at minimum, a
clear grasp of the constraints and workarounds involved
* Comfort designing APIs for real-time and batch AI/ML pipelines
Due to the nature and urgency of this post, candidates holding or who have held high level security clearance in the past are most welcome to apply. Please note successful applicants will be required to be security cleared prior to appointment which can take up to a minimum 10 weeks. LA International is a HMG approved ICT Recruitment and Project Solutions Consultancy, operating globally from the largest single site in the UK as an IT Consultancy or as an Employment Business & Agency depending upon the precise nature of the work, for security cleared jobs or non-clearance vacancies, LA International welcome applications from all sections of the community and from people with diverse experience and backgrounds.
Award Winning LA International, winner of the Recruiter Awards for Excellence, Best IT Recruitment Company, Best Public Sector Recruitment Company and overall Gold Award winner, has now secured the most prestigious business award that any business can receive, The Queens Award for Enterprise: International Trade, for the second consecutive period.
