Discover the crème de la crème of London’s backend companies in this blog as we unveil the top 5 powerhouses driving the city’s tech scene. These companies showcase technical prowess, groundbreaking solutions, and a reputation for excellence. Whether you’re an aspiring developer or an entrepreneur seeking collaboration, this list serves as your compass to navigate the thriving world of backend development in London.

Laced 

Laced is the owner of an e-commerce platform that allows customers to purchase and sell sneakers. The company’s platform sells shoes for men, women, and children, and clients can pay for their purchases using cash on delivery, credit or debit card, or net banking.

Why developers love Laced:

• Rapidly scaling, tech-driven marketplace

• Year-on-year growth creates a unique opportunity for any employee looking to accelerate their engineering career

• Heavy lean on the principles of Domain Driven Design

CTO at Laced is Chris Conolly. A senior technology leader with proven experience scaling high-performing teams and building scalable, highly successful, technology-led products. Chris has experience in both building new and restructuring existing teams around strong product domains to create highly scalable and groundbreaking products that are critical to modern technology companies staying innovative and in front. His leadership roles over the last 8 years has seen him work across both physical and purely digital products, and under heavy regulations (FCA), both these companies achieving coveted “Tech Unicorn” status during his tenure.

Joining the team as an engineer, you’ll deliver the highest-quality products that address real customer needs, and you’ll find like-minded colleagues who are here for the same reasons. 

Not only will you be ensuring operational excellence, but you’ll also collaborate with a variety of experts across the business to create iterative solutions that continuously enhance the value we provide to our customers.

Peppy

Peppy is a leading digital platform that helps employers give their people expert support for underserved areas of healthcare.

Why developers love Peppy:

• Collaborative and Dynamic Environment

• One of Europe’s fastest growing HealthTech scale-ups; 8x revenue growth in 2021 and 4x revenue growth in 2022

• Innovation and Creativity – Autonomy to propose and implement new ideas, experiment with novel solutions, and contribute to the overall product roadmap

VP of Engineering since 2021 at Preppy is Mike Griffiths. An experienced engineering and operations leader with 25+ years of experience in the industry. Mike is able to combine deep technical knowledge with highly developed leadership, people and project management skills, to get the very best out of individuals and teams, and to enable organisations to deliver the right solutions, on time and on budget.

Working at Pepply, you’ll be part of a cross-functional product development team with a core remit focusing on the core Node.js and Python backend systems. Using initiative and contributing wherever the need arises. You’ll be part of a small but growing team in a fast-paced agile environment and will play a key role in helping to scale the product development efforts during the next phase of their growth.

Hived

Hived provides innovative technology that focuses on parcel delivery systems. The company creates the future mass-market parcel delivery network by leveraging vertical integration, operational process innovation, and software, allowing businesses to reduce their carbon footprint.

Why developers love Hived:

• People first company – focus on supporting their team to fulfil career ambitions, with plenty of opportunities for growth and progression

• Data driven organisation

• In-house routing engines, apps and data stack

Starting out his journey as Founding Engineer in 2021 and currently Head of Data, Jan Gerrit Hölting leverages a modern tech stack, vertical integration and data to improve parcel delivery for everyone: retailers, recipients, couriers and the planet.

Joining the team you’d be working on new and existing services that power HIVED’s emission-free parcel delivery network. As an engineer, you’ll play an integral part of a cross-functional team, responsible for the full software development life cycle, from discovery, design, and deployment, to monitoring production systems. You’ll have a tangible impact on growing HIVED’s software in a fast and sustainable fashion.

PolyAI

PolyAI develops a machine learning platform for conversational artificial intelligence. PolyAI builds enterprise voice assistants that carry on natural conversations with customers to solve their problems. PolyAI’s voice assistants understand customers, regardless of what they say or how they say it. Founded in 2017, the company has its headquarters in London, England, United Kingdom, and New York, United States of America.

Why developers love PolyAI:

• Bias for action

• Considerate transparency

• Their clients are leading enterprises in various industries around the world, not just the UK!

Directing of Engineering at PolyAI and Ex Software Engineer at Amazon is Colman Yau. With experience in leading the engineering department, hiring and training new team members and managing tech projects with both a strategic and a technical role inside the company. Colman has experience in setting goals for the team, hiring engineers and prioritising projects. The technical aspect is about getting actively involved in developing new products, identifying requirements and setting timelines.

Engineers will ensure the stability, scalability, and reliability of the core service. Demonstrating innovation and a forward-thinking approach, while maintaining a collaborative and team-oriented approach. As well as being part of a team that consists of people with diverse perspectives, ideas, and cultures, reflecting the multicultural and multilingual backgrounds of our customers.

Olio

Olio is a sharing app for local communities, on a mission to fight waste.

Olio makes it easy to pass on the things you no longer need — from food to furniture, and clothes to books — to people who live nearby. You take a photo of your item, add it to the app, and wait for someone to request and collect it.

Olio also works with businesses to redistribute their unsold or unserved food. They pair trained volunteers with local shops, cafes and offices, who pick up whatever food is left at the end of each day. They then add it to the app for people nearby to request and collect.

That way, every last bit of edible food ends up benefitting local people, rather than it ending up in the bin.

Why developers love Olio:

• Completely mission/impact focused

• 4th in top 100 UK places to work 2022

• Recognised by the United Nations, who highlighted Olio as a “beacon” for the world, and by Vivatech who awarded Olio “Next European Unicorn”.

CTO since 2021 at Olio is Fabián Díaz, an experienced technology professional with a strong passion for building and scaling engineering teams. With a demonstrated track record of strategic leadership, optimizing development processes, and delivering impactful solutions, Fabian has a background in tech companies from startup to the corporate stage, driving customer-centric product development and implementing scalable agile methodologies across engineering organizations of 40+ contributors. With a proven track record leading cross-functional teams in the creation and launch of client-facing products in both regional and global markets. Fabian’s Key skills include effective leadership, mentoring and coaching, team building, technical expertise, stakeholder management, product mindset, and business orientation.

Joining the team, you’ll help build new features and improve our current systems. The growth of Olio was initially very organic. But now, as the user base increases, it’s necessary that the capacity and resilience of the systems are increased while delivering on new and exciting projects.