Kernel is seeking an experienced T-shaped Full Stack Engineer with strong backend engineering skills to lead the scalable back-end infrastructure from AWS to workflow automations in n8n. You will contribute to building and scaling production systems for enterprise customers, focusing on clean, enrich, and complete CRM data. Must have strong backend engineering skills and experience working with AWS, NodeJS, Postgres, and Kubernetes.
Key Highlights
Technical Skills Required
Benefits & Perks
Job Description
About Kernel
Kernel gives enterprise RevOps teams confidence in their CRM data.
We’ve raised a $14M Series A from top VCs and operators at Plaid, OpenAI, Slack and others to build the AI-native alternative to Dun & Bradstreet’s entity and hierarchy data.
RevOps teams at Gong, Navan, Zip, Remote and GoCardless use Kernel to clean, enrich and complete their CRM data at enterprise scale, eliminating duplicates, fixing hierarchies and restoring trust in the foundation that powers forecasting, territory planning and AI initiatives.
Our platform combines entity-level intelligence with mass-action tooling to give RevOps teams the data quality and control needed to plan confidently and deploy AI successfully.
The Role
You are a T-shaped full stack engineer with a spike in backend engineering. You will work with product and engineering on the product overall and support our infrastructure so we can scale efficiently. You do not need to be a DevOps wizard, but experience with AWS and Kubernetes is helpful.
You are adaptable, take initiative and enjoy contributing at pace. The team is lean, the environment is low-structure and clear communication matters. You will own our back-end infrastructure from AWS to our workflow automations in n8n and help us scale from $1 M to $10 M ARR. We are still early in building our infrastructure, so you will play a key role in shaping what we build and how we build it.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Owning and scaling Kernel’s back-end infrastructure (AWS, NodeJS, Postgres, n8n)
- Designing systems that process millions of accounts, terabytes of data and thousands of parallel executions
- Building reliable, scalable data pipelines and services for enterprise customers
- Rapidly shipping features to users and to our internal team
- Continuously evaluating code, infrastructure and processes to find improvements
- Automating manual processes to increase speed and reliability
- Sharing feedback on roadmap direction and ideas on bets to place and potential solutions
More specifically you will be:
- Ensuring a world-class, scalable back-end infrastructure
- Working daily with the team to move us toward our next goal
- Implementing mass-action workflows that clean, enrich and complete CRM data
- Establishing robust monitoring, observability and reliability practices
- Partnering with product and solutions engineering to translate business logic into safe mass actions in customer CRMs
What You Bring
- 6+ years of software or product engineering experience
- Strong experience building and scaling production systems
- Comfort with backend engineering (NodeJS, Postgres, TypeScript)
- Strong understanding of LLM application development patterns (RAG, prompt engineering, consistency testing) - either through production experience or demonstrated personal projects. If you're new to LLMs but have shipped complex production systems in other domains and are comfortable rapidly learning new technologies, we'd still love to hear from you.
- Ability to operate autonomously in a small, high-velocity team
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills
- Some experience with Kubernetes or distributed systems
It is a plus if you also have:
- Experience working on AI-driven or data-heavy products
- Frontend experience (NextJS, React, TypeScript)
- Understanding of CRM data models or workflow automation
⚠️ This role may not be for you if you:
- Need lots of structure
- Will only ship pixel-perfect results before releasing
- Need a fully fleshed-out spec to code
- Are heavily indexed on DevOps and have spent less time on software engineering
❌ This role is definitely not for you if you:
- Prefer fully remote work (this role requires at least 3 days a week in the office)
- Do not enjoy the intensity of an early-stage startup
- Have side hustles or other projects
- Want to manage a team
What We Offer
We will do our best to offer you a ride of a lifetime. It will not be easy, but it will be thrilling.
- 💰 Salary: £120,000 – £200,000 + equity
- 🗓️ 24 days holiday per year + bank holidays
- ✈️ 2 weeks work-from-anywhere
- 💼 Pension plan
- 💻 Top-spec equipment and central London office
- 🍽️ Free dinner at the office
- 🎉 Team events and dinners
- 🚀 Work directly with the founders to scale the systems that power enterprise AI
🛠️ Tech Stack
- Back-end (AWS): NodeJS, TypeScript, Postgres
- Front-end: NextJS, TypeScript, Tailwind
- Workflow automation: n8n
❤️ Team
We are around 30 people with 7 engineers and 1 Product Manager, including:
- Sam Houghton, Founding Engineer
- Eleanor Leung, Senior Engineer
- David Saltares, Senior Engineer
- Stefan Sabev, Head of Product
- Tom Ankers, Senior Engineer
- Willis Chou, Senior Engineer
🎫 Visas & Relocation
We sponsor visas for exceptional candidates and provide relocation support for those moving to London.
Interview Process
Stage 1 – 30-minute intro call with a key member of our hiring team. You will get a quick overview of Kernel and discuss your motivations and strengths.
Stage 2 – Take-home task (≤ 4 hours) solving a real Kernel problem.
Stage 3 – 90-minute technical interview in our London office to review your solution and understand your thinking.
Final Stage – Founders interview with Anders (CEO) and Marcus to explore values alignment.
If there is mutual fit, we move to references and offer.