Contract Python Software Engineer, ThoughtRiver
3+ month outside IR35 Contract
£50-90k
£300 to £500 per day
1 day a week in office (Waterloo, London)
AI-powered contract review, analysis and workflows since 2016
Posted today
AI-powered contract review, analysis and workflows since 2016
21-100 employees
Posted today
£50-90k
£300 to £500 per day
1 day a week in office (Waterloo, London)
21-100 employees
Company mission
To put sophisticated contract review AI in the hands of lawyers.
Role
Who you are
- You will have 4+ years of professional experience as a Backend or Software Engineer with Python as your primary language
- Proven expertise in event-driven services, REST APIs, and microservice design
- Strong grounding in databases, MySQL and Redis ideally, but SQL and NoSQL, data modelling, and API integrations
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or similar)
- Familiarity with containerisation (Docker) and cloud deployments (Azure or AWS)
- Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work in a fast-paced startup culture
- Experience integrating AI/ML pipelines or APIs into backend systems
Desirable
- Experience in SaaS, legal-tech, or other regulated industries
- Exposure to observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry)
- Knowledge of Kubernetes (AKS) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform)
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Backend Python Software Engineer to help build, scale, and optimise the backend services that power ThoughtRiver’s AI-driven legal platform. This is a hands-on engineering role where you will design and implement event-driven services, APIs, and integrations that connect our AI models with enterprise clients worldwide
- You’ll collaborate closely with AI engineers, product managers, QA, and our legal experts to deliver secure, scalable, and performant systems that underpin the next generation of contract intelligence
- Design, build, and maintain Python-based backend services that connect AI models, data pipelines, and user-facing applications
- Develop and optimise RESTful APIs and microservices running in a cloud-native (Azure) environment
- Collaborate with AI and platform engineers to integrate LLM outputs into production-grade services
- Implement testing frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, and monitoring tools to ensure reliability and uptime
- Contribute to architecture decisions around scalability, security, and future-proofing the platform
- Work closely with product teams to translate legal workflows into robust technical implementations
Application process
- Apply with your profile
- Video Interview with our Recruiter - 30 minutes
- Video Interview with the CTO - 1 hour
- Video Interview with the COO - 30 minutes
Salary benchmarks
Our take
ThoughtRiver is a legal tech company that addresses a fundamental problem for in-house counsels and lawyers: you don’t know whether you need to read a contract without reading it. ThoughtRiver’s contract pre-screening technology uses machine learning and legal intelligence to automate the initial scan and analysis of contracts to produce an actionable recommendation on what to do next with the contract – and why.
Developed by ThoughtRiver’s lawyers and its partners who are domain experts, Lexible is a universal contract description framework that uses 1000s of data points to build a detailed picture of legal obligations and rights within any legal agreement. Lexible comes pre-programmed with thousands of questions posed by real lawyers. It works by first deploying a sophisticated language processing (NLP) engine developed in collaboration with Cambridge University. This allows it to understand the meaning of the words within an agreement. ThoughtRiver can then ask and answer thousands of questions according to their Lexible framework to build a detailed picture of the obligations and rights within the agreement. All of this data is then summarised into clear, actionable advice.
It also aims to promote partnerships with ThoughtRiver to legal service providers who can create new sources of income using its services. For example, by configuring the platform to answer specific questions and identify certain risks, legal service providers can allow their clients to review contracts on the ThoughtRiver platform through a sub-account. This review takes minutes, not hours, which creates an opportunity for a profitable and repeatable new revenue stream. The company aspires to make its technology available and accessible to companies around the world. ThoughtRiver works with in-house legal teams, general counsels and law firms.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Meet the team
10 people
Jakub Zajac, Front-end Engineer
Our mission
We build precise, scalable AI for reliable contract review, ensuring speed, accuracy, and seamless legal workflows tailored to industry needs.Insights
Company
Employee endorsements
Challenging work
"The opportunity to collaborate on complex projects with some of the world's leading businesses is exhilarating. Working on pioneering projects that..."
Funding (2 rounds)
Aug 2020
$10m
SERIES A
Oct 2018
$4.1m
SEED
Total funding: $14.1m
Company benefits
- Life assurance at 4x salary
- Private medical insurance with Aviva
- Employer pension with Scottish Widows
- Additional holiday for long term employees
- Birthday holiday and lunch
Company values
- Shift Left - Innovation requires leaps and rapid learning. We shift decisions earlier and test frequently across the business to deliver.
- See around corners - We think proactively, anticipate challenges and keep our clients ahead of the game.
- Own Your Impact - Each colleague is essential to our success. We hold ourselves to a high standard, foster trust, integrity and accountability.
- Shows Passion & Purpose - We aim to positively impact our colleagues, clients, partners and the community.
Company HQ
Cambridge, UK
Articles
Leadership
Jennifer Hill
(CEO)Seasoned COO and business leader with experience growing tech start-ups to profitability.
Tim Pullan
(Advisor & Founder)Associate Partner at Cambridge Management Consulting and Advisor at Circuit Medical Ltd. Previously a Partner at Taylor Vinters and was a Member of the ICT Committee at the British Chambers of Commerce.
People progressing
James has been with ThoughtRiver since early 2022. He started as a BDR and now is an Enterprise Account Director looking after key accounts and bring in new business to ThoughtRiver.
John has been with ThoughtRiver since 2018. During that time, he has had many roles from Lead Application Engineer, Team Lead and now looking after DevOps.
Katie has been with ThoughtRiver for just under 3 years, she started as a Customer Success Manager and is now Senior CSM and Account Manager.
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