Senior / Staff Backend Engineer (Routing & Optimisation)

About HIVED 📦

At HIVED, we’re steamrolling forward as one of Europe’s fastest growing startups, and our momentum shows no signs of slowing.

Based in London, we are a climate and logistics start-up building the first sustainable parcel delivery network at scale, powered by a 100% electric fleet. In an ever-growing industry where unreliable service has long been the norm, HIVED has been built from the ground-up to meet the demands of modern consumers and disrupt parcel delivery.

A tech company at heart, our talent and technology is laser-focused on delivering the best possible delivery experience for end-customers and meeting the needs of our retail partners. From our drivers to our data engineers, we are constantly working to improve this customer experience that makes us deliver better.

Already trusted by leading international brands such as John Lewis, Nespresso, Uniqlo, H&M brands and more, we are solidifying our position as the leaders in Europe to tackle this growing market.

Our tight-knit team is made up of ex-Revolut, Bain, HelloFresh, ASOS, Apple and Google employees, and we are backed by some of Europe’s leading investors and VCs in climate-tech, logistics and mobility including Planet A Ventures , Maersk Growth , Pale Blue Dot VC , Eka Ventures , NordicNinja VC and the British government. We’re passionate about driving innovation and redefining the future of delivery.

Role Overview 📝

We're looking for a Senior or Staff Engineer to take on some of the hardest problems at HIVED: the planning systems that decide how every parcel moves through our 100% electric delivery network.

You'll join the Routing Squad , which owns HIVED's entire planning pipeline: demand forecasting, capacity planning and scheduling, sortation, our collections network and large-scale route optimisation. Most of the work is backend engineering on distributed, production-grade systems, built in close partnership with data scientists, analysts and our operations teams. If your depth is in operations research or machine learning and you want to see your models plan a real delivery network every day, we'd love to hear from you too.

This is a hands-on role with a lot of technical ownership. You'll shape how the pieces of the pipeline fit together and your work shows up in the routes our drivers take, the cages filled at our depots and the parcels that arrive on time.

The problems are as varied as they are hard. How much volume will each depot see next week, and how many drivers and vehicles do we need to meet it? How should parcels flow through sortation and our collections network so nothing is handled twice? How do we turn each day's parcels into routes that are efficient, reliable and on time? And how do we model the cost and geography of our network as we expand into new cities?

What You'll be Doing 🚀

• Build the planning pipeline. Design, build and run the distributed systems behind routing, capacity planning, sortation and our collections network.

• Turn ambiguity into designs. Take complex operational problems, break them down, and see them through from first investigation to production.

• Shape the architecture. Shape how the planning pipeline fits together, and coordinate with other squads where our systems meet theirs.

• Put models into production. Build and productionise optimisation, forecasting and ML models, making them robust, observable and ready for peak volumes.

• Stay close to the operation. Work directly with operations teams, see how plans perform on the ground, and close the loop with data.

• Raise the bar. Lead design and code reviews, mentor engineers, and set the standards for testing and reliability.

What We're Looking For 🔎

• Typically 5+ years of software engineering experience, building and operating production systems.

• A track record of technical ownership beyond your own work: you've shaped the architecture or direction of systems spanning multiple components or teams.

• The ability to translate complex, ambiguous operational problems into technical solutions with measurable impact.

• Proficiency in Python or Go, or another language with the ability to ramp up quickly on HIVED's stack.

• An appetite for hard optimisation problems: routing, scheduling, forecasting, supply-demand matching, or other constraint-heavy domains.

• Strong collaboration and written communication skills, with the confidence to work across engineering, data science, analytics and operations.

You also bring depth in at least one of:

• Backend and distributed systems: strong system design skills in distributed, production-grade environments, including event-driven architectures, cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred), and reliability and performance at scale.

• Optimisation / operations research: linear and integer programming, constraint programming or heuristics, and integrating solvers such as OR-Tools or Gurobi into production systems.

• Machine learning: forecasting and predictive models that feed planning decisions, from development to monitoring in production.

Technologies we use 💻

• Python, Go

• AWS (Lambda, ECS Fargate, Step Functions, SQS, EventBridge, Aurora PostgreSQL), CDK (TypeScript)

• GCP, BigQuery, Looker

• Grafana, Loki, Tempo, Prometheus

• GitHub, GitHub Actions

• Claude Code

• Event-driven architecture and domain-driven design

Our interviewing process 🪜

• Intro call with the hiring manager

• Live coding challenge solving a problem

• A take home case study, followed by a discussion

• On-site interview at our Shoreditch HQ (role and culture)

Our Values

• 😊 We Are Kind - Kind to the planet, our team and our partners. We listen with purpose, leave our egos at the door and aren't afraid to make difficult decisions. We must never confuse kindness with being "nice" - it requires us to be fair, consistent, honest, thoughtful and compassionate.

• 🤝 We Are Tenacious - We fight every day to keep the customer promise, for every parcel entrusted to us. No matter how hard it gets or whatever stands in our way, we are relentless in our pursuit of excellence.

• 💡 We Are Curious - We never settle, constantly challenge convention and are never afraid to ask why. We believe there is always more to learn, always a better way, and that we're always only just getting started. We never fight the urge to be inquisitive, to understand the world around us and to explore where others might not.

• 🌍 We Are Resourceful - Our planet's resources are scarce and our future depends on our ability to use them wisely. Waste is the enemy. We strive to do more with less, be more efficient and make the most of what we have.

How we reward our team 🎁

• Dynamic hybrid working environment with a diverse and driven team

• Huge opportunity for learning in a high growth environment, with progression opportunities based on success in the role

• 25 days of holiday allowance plus public holidays

• 1 Birthday Day Off + 2 Tenure-Based Additional Days Off

• Subsidised Private Medical Insurance including dental, vision & mental health therapy

• Bi-annual performance reviews and tailored development plans

• Competitive salary + EMI options scheme

• Annual compensation review

• Team lunch provided once a week

• Quarterly team socials and annual sports day (HIVED Olympics)

• Enhanced maternity/paternity/adoption policy as day 1 right

• Community volunteer days

• Cycle to work scheme

• Dog friendly office and depots

• MacBook Air or Windows Laptop (depending on your preference)

🔍 Want to learn more?

• HIVED is B Corporation certified

• HIVED is #7 on The Sunday Times Tech 100

• Read how HIVED raised $42M to transform parcel delivery with AI and all-electric logistics network

• Check the Impact Reports for 2024 and 2025

• Keep up with HIVED ✨ here ✨