
Duel has developed both the technology and methodology to enable purpose-led brands to drive organic growth through word of mouth and advocacy. Committed to working with brands that put people and…

Duel has developed both the technology and methodology to enable purpose-led brands to drive organic growth through word of mouth and advocacy. Committed to working with brands that put people and…
What they do: Brand Advocacy SaaS platform that recruits, manages and rewards advocates, affiliates and creators to drive word-of-mouth and social commerce.
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: London (offices in New York and Bristol)
Notable customers: Rab, Lowe Alpine, Tough Mudder, Monica Vinader, King of Shaves, Frugi, Mud Jeans
Employees (reported): 36
Customer advocacy, social commerce, user-generated content and retention for consumer retail brands.
2015
IT Services and IT Consulting
Total Funding: 5550000
Staff Engineer, Platform
Location: Bristol Office, Hybrid
Reports to: Engineering Manager, Platform Engineering
Salary: £90,000 - £95,000
About Us
Duel is a SaaS company on a mission to make Brand Advocacy the industry standard philosophy for building brilliant retail brands. It was founded by world record-breaking adventurer and former brand ambassador Paul Archer. We exist to show that companies built for advocacy can change the world. In today's hyper connected world in which social media is now twice the size of all other media channels combined and entirely user-generated, the most successful brands are the ones investing in people and in community, not in ads.
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The Duel Brand Advocacy Solution allows enterprise brands to do just that. We have onboarded over 60 influential brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Charlotte Tilbury, Spanx, Victoria's Secret, LUSH and Elemis. The Duel team's global presence includes offices in New York City & London.
Our team of 60+ is composed of psychologists, brand experts and community builders, combining cutting-edge brand expertise with seasoned SaaS experience.
Backed by top VCs, Duel recently announced a $16 million Series A, which will accelerate growth in the US from our base in New York, and bring our entirely AI-driven product vision to life to equip brands with the solution needed to drive growth through thousands of advocates, customers, creators and brand ambassadors.
The Role
Duel is all on enterprise. We're onboarding Fortune 500 brands, the kind of brands that change the scale of everything underneath them. Our platform needs to match that ambition, and the platform engeering team owns that responsibility: the backend services, the infrastructure, the queue based pipelines, the operational integrity of the whole thing. This role puts you at the centre of that team, hands in the code, hands on the infrastructure, leading the engineers who keep it all running and making sure the platform evolves as fast as the business does.
This is a staff level engineering role. Your time will be split across hands on delivery, technical leadership and mentoring senior engineers, though in practice the balance shifts week to week depending on what needs shipping and what needs fixing. You'll be writing code in a Node.js/TypeScript codebase that's been continuously evolving. Some of it is modern. Some of it carries a decade of decisions. You'll need a real grasp on the conventions of how Node.js is and has been written, because understanding the history of the code is as important as shaping its future.
If you've spent time in enterprise systems, platforms or environments where the code matters and the delivery stakes are high, you'll feel right at home.
We're Looking for Someone Who Will…
Proactively deliver in a Node.js/TypeScript codebase across multiple services, not just oversee others doing it.
As a team we take full ownership of the platform — the queues, the database, the infrastructure, the pipelines. As the Staff Engineer you’ll be the technical lead across these areas, working hands-on alongside the team:
Lead P1 incident response: coordinate responders, drive root cause analysis, write clear post mortems and make sure the same thing doesn't happen twice.
Contribute to and implement operational standards including runbooks, alerting thresholds and SLAs/SLOs, working with the Engineering Manager to define what good looks like as Duel moves into enterprise territory
Use Datadog as the primary observability platform: dashboards, log based metrics, alerting and APM traces for production diagnosis.
Run load testing and performance engineering to find bottlenecks before they become incidents.
Reason about trade offs across queues, databases, APIs and infrastructure as a connected system, not isolated components. Design for throughput, backpressure, failure modes and recovery.
Make architectural decisions that hold up under load and remain maintainable by the team, balancing what needs to be modernised against what needs to be left alone.
Translate ambiguous business needs into actionable technical plans and surface concerns about unrealistic timelines with clear reasoning and alternatives, working with the Engineering Manager to align on the right path forward.
Manage the tension between what Product wants to ship and what the platform can actually support. Communicate constraints to non technical stakeholders without hiding behind jargon.
Mentor engineers through complex problem solving and system design. Create accountability without micromanagement.
Lead on technical scoping and estimation, contributing directly to cycle planning alongside the Engineering Manager. Provide clear input on cross functional dependencies with Product, Frontend and Data to inform sequencing decisions.
Integrate AI tooling into the engineering workflow: code generation, review, testing and documentation. Understand where it adds genuine value and where it introduces risk.
Mentor the team on effective AI usage, building real confidence and good habits.
We'd Love to Hear from You If You Have…
The Person
Bonus Points For
The Dueligan Culture
In-Person and Remote Working Balance
We do much of our best work together in person, which is why we're hiring people within commuting distance of our London, Bristol or New York offices. But we also recognise the value of deep work at home. Our hybrid philosophy gives you freedom and flexibility, you do you, as long as it's not at the expense of others.
Duel Perks and Benefits
Duel is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees