Principal Backend Engineer

Senior Staff Backend / Systems Engineer – €80k–€140k/year + ESOP – Lisbon (Onsite)

Plexus is partnered with a fast-growing cloud infrastructure company building a large-scale distributed compute network used by major enterprise clients. With the core platform now stable, they’re scaling for go-to-market, accelerating development, and strengthening in-house technical redundancy.

They’re hiring a Principal/Staff-level systems engineer, a hands-on problem solver who can tackle complex distributed systems challenges and work closely with senior engineers to keep critical knowledge inside the organisation.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build distributed compute systems, virtualization layers, and core backend infrastructure.

• Work on the company’s distribution network layer, solving deep, complex architecture problems.

• Pair with senior engineers to build redundancy and cross-team knowledge.

• Write high-quality, high-performance code and drive key technical decisions.

• Collaborate directly with the CTO and founding team on strategy, research, and long-term platform design.

Requirements:

• Strong background in systems/backend engineering with deep distributed systems experience.

• Proficient in C/C++, Go, Rust or similar low-level languages.

• Not required to be a Rust expert—but ideally you’ve been experimenting with Rust for the last 2–3 years.