Dex - Staff Product Engineer

Dex
London, United Kingdom
Hybrid

Who this role is best for

Best suited to full-stack engineers with backend focus and experience in AI integration working in early-stage tech startups in London.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with experience in building scalable backend systems and AI-driven products
    — “you've moved fast in scrappy, early-stage environments, and seen what good looks like at scale”
  • Individuals who can independently drive product delivery and make pragmatic trade-offs
    — “you can own and ship end-to-end product slices with minimal supervision”
  • Engineers comfortable with Python, FastAPI, and Postgres who prioritize production reliability
    — “you handle data integrity, error paths, idempotence, and API versioning as standard practice”

Things to consider

  • This role demands full-time in-office presence in London for the onsite interview loop
    — “visit the office, meet a cohort of the team”
  • Candidates must be able to work effectively with product and design teams under ambiguity
    — “translate ambiguous requirements into concrete shipped work”

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience with end-to-end product ownership and backend-first development
    — “own complete product slices end-to-end”
  • Demonstrate expertise in LLM integration and real-time audio pipelines in your portfolio
    — “building products where AI is in the critical path, not bolted on”
  • Showcase your ability to ship workable frontend when required, not just backend
    — “ship workable React/TypeScript frontend for product features”
  • Emphasize your track record of shipping features that stayed in production and scaled
    — “your track record shows features that shipped, stuck, and scaled”
  • Demonstrate your ability to handle API design, data modeling, and operational concerns
    — “handle data integrity, error paths, API evolution, and operational concerns as a default”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • successful delivery of product features
  • ownership of complete product slices
Typical background
leading teams or entire product lines

Skills & requirements

Required

Full-stack DevelopmentBackend DevelopmentLLM IntegrationProduct ApisData PipelinesPython/fastapi/postgres StackCross-functional Collaboration

Preferred

LLM Integration Experience

Stack & domain

PythonFastapiPostgreSQLReactTypeScript

About the role

Original posting from Dex via Ashby

Our Mission

Human time and effort is the rarest thing in the universe. The fact that so many people hate what they do for work is a disaster on so many levels. How many people live quiet lives of misery? How many generational talents do we miss due to circumstance?

Dex’s mission is to close the gap between Talent & Opportunity, we believe that work, and being productive, is part of the human condition, that regardless of AI, human passion, ingenuity and a desire to do things means that work will always exist.

We are building Dex to create a future where technology helps every individual to understand their strengths, interests and unique abilities, and to connect with opportunities where they can thrive, because more people doing things they love leads to a better, happier and more productive world.

We are starting by connecting the world's most ambitious software engineers with the companies that deserve them.

The Role

This is a Staff-level full-stack product role with a backend-heavy centre of gravity. You'll own complete product slices end-to-end — things like a candidate database with rich search and filtering, a dashboard that surfaces call transcripts and match history for our Talent Operations team, and the workflows that let them stack-rank candidates against a new role in minutes rather than hours. You ship these without needing to be guided step by step.

You're not a specialist who hands off at the API boundary. You think in user outcomes and delivery units, and you're reliable: your code handles edge cases, your APIs have clean contracts, and the work you ship stays shipped.

What You'll Do

  • Own product delivery — take features from spec to production, backend-first but covering frontend and integration where needed
  • Build and maintain backend systems — product APIs, data pipelines, and core infrastructure on our Python/FastAPI/Postgres stack
  • Build with LLMs and agents — ship product features with significant LLM integration; contribute to the voice agent backend and information extraction systems
  • Work across the stack — ship workable React/TypeScript frontend for product features; not a frontend specialist, but comfortable and pragmatic
  • Collaborate with product and design — translate ambiguous requirements into concrete shipped work; be the engineer who unblocks, not the one who waits
  • Maintain quality at speed — handle data integrity, error paths, API evolution, and operational concerns as a default, not an afterthought

What We're Looking For

  • Leading teams or entire product lines - You can take responsibility for driving delivery across a team or across an entire product line
  • Seeing good at scale, and early stage - you've moved fast in scrappy, early-stage environments, and seen what good looks like at scale
  • Independent delivery - You can own and ship end-to-end product slices with minimal supervision; your track record shows features that shipped, stuck, and scaled
  • Product trade-off judgment - you balance speed, quality, and user impact under ambiguity; you push back when something is underspecified and make pragmatic calls when it needs to ship
  • Reliability and API discipline - you handle data integrity, error paths, idempotence, and API versioning as standard practice; production reliability is your default, not a later concern
  • Cross-functional pragmatism - you work effectively with product and design, can unblock yourself across the stack, and ship workable frontend when that's what's needed

Strong technical depth in:

  • Python backend (FastAPI or equivalent, async patterns, Postgres, Redis)
  • LLM integration — building products where AI is in the critical path, not bolted on
  • API design and data modelling
  • JavaScript/TypeScript — comfortable enough to ship frontend features and review frontend PRs

Nice to Have

  • Experience with voice agents or real-time audio pipelines
  • Familiarity with evals, guardrails, or agent observability
  • Familiarity with GCP / cloud infrastructure
  • Experience in recruiting tech, marketplaces, or matching systems

The Stack

A modern Python stack: FastAPI, Postgres, Redis, Docker, Pydantic AI, running on GCP. Frontend in React/TypeScript. We iterate fast and keep the codebase clean.

  • What We Offer
  • Above market salary — we're building a world class team and believe pay should match that ambition
  • Significant equity — we want this to be the last job you 'have' to take
  • Full private healthcare & dental — because life happens and we want to support you
  • Fertility benefits & enhanced parental support
  • Gym membership & wellness benefits
  • Claude tokens — lots and lots of Claude tokens
  • Regular socials, offsites and an annual trip
  • MacBook Pro + team kit
  • "Whatever you need" approach to tools and support

Interview process

We move quickly and with conviction. Broadly you can expect:

  • We love it when candidates have experimented with our agent, Dex. Even if you aren't an Engineer, you can get a sense of what we're building, and we love to hear your feedback.
  • A 30m video call with our Internal Talent Lead; we'll share more about the team, role and business before asking questions about your experience and fit.
  • Hiring Manager call: we'll share more specific context on short and medium-term objectives and ask deeper questions relative to the role requirements.
  • Most roles involve a practical task to better understand how you work. Usually completed offline and reviewed by the team.
  • Onsite interview loop where you'll visit the office, meet a cohort of the team, one interview centred on the task you produced, another on Dex culture and values, with a final interview with our Founder, Paddy.

Source: Dex careers (Ashby)

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