Developer - Scala

Sage; Newcastle upon Tyne; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous pension

Leave: 25 days + 5

8 bank holidays

Volunteer days 5 per year

Health coverage

Job summary

Sage in Newcastle upon Tyne is seeking a Backend Developer to join our HCM Localisation engineering team. You will design, develop, and maintain scalable backend services built with Scala 2.13 and Play Framework within a Pekko-based environment, supporting complex HR product workflows.

You will collaborate across product, QA, and DevOps to deliver reliable cloud-based services on AWS, contribute to CI/CD pipelines, and continually improve observability and performance while modernising an

Qualifications

• Professional backend development experience in enterprise, SaaS, or cloud-based product environments.
• Strong hands-on experience with Scala: collections, Futures, immutability, pattern matching, error handling.
• Commercial experience with Play Framework or comparable JVM backend frameworks; Pekko or Akka experience is highly relevant.
• Strong understanding of relational databases, especially MySQL, with SQL optimization and indexing.
• Experience using Redis for caching, session handling, or performance-sensitive workloads.
• Deep understanding of OOP, functional programming, concurrency, Scala type system, and advanced architectural patterns.
• Ability to design and evolve complex distributed systems while promoting engineering best practices.
• Hands-on experience with AWS services and cloud-native delivery practices.
• Good understanding of CI/CD, Git, branching strategies, PR flows, and automated testing.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain backend services using Scala 2.13 and Play Framework in a Pekko-based environment.
• Build clean, testable, and maintainable code using functional programming principles.
• Work with MySQL to design efficient data access patterns, optimize queries, and profile performance.
• Develop, deploy, and support services in AWS in collaboration with DevOps and platform teams.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, code reviews, and engineering best practices.
• Collaborate with frontend engineers, QA, product owners, and other backend developers to deliver high-quality increments.
• Support production stability by improving observability and reducing technical debt.

Skills

Scala backend

Play Framework

Pekko/Akka

MySQL

Redis

AWS

CI/CD

Git workflows

Agile teams

Functional programming

Tools

Scala 2.13

JVM

Queries/Indexing

Job description

Job Description

We are looking for a Backend Developer to join our HCM Localisation engineering team and help evolve a large-scale, cloud-based enterprise product. This role is focused on building and maintaining scalable backend services supporting complex product workflows, integrations, performance improvements, and ongoing platform modernisation.

*** Please note: This is a hybrid role requiring 3 days per week in our Newcastle office ***

Key Responsibilities

In this role you'll:

• Design, develop, and maintain robust backend services using Scala 2.13 and Play Framework in a Pekko-based environment.
• Build clean, testable, and maintainable code using functional programming principles, immutability, pattern matching, and asynchronous programming with Futures.
• Work with MySQL to design efficient data access patterns, optimize queries, tune indexes, and profile database performance.
• Develop, deploy, and support services in AWS, working closely with DevOps and platform teams to ensure reliable delivery.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, Git-based pull request workflows, code reviews, and engineering best practices.
• Collaborate with frontend engineers, QA, product owners, solution designers, and other backend developers to deliver high-quality product increments.
• Support production stability by investigating issues, improving observability, and continuously reducing technical debt.

Required Skills and Experience

• Professional backend development experience, ideally in enterprise, SaaS, or cloud-based product environments.
• Strong hands-on experience with Scala, including collections, Futures, immutability, pattern matching, error handling, and clean functional design.
• Commercial experience with Play Framework or comparable JVM backend frameworks; Pekko or Akka experience is highly relevant.
• Strong understanding of relational databases, especially MySQL, with practical knowledge of SQL optimization, indexes, query profiling, and transaction behaviour.
• Experience using Redis or similar technologies for caching, session handling, or performance-sensitive workloads.
• Deep understanding of OOP principles, functional programming, concurrency, the Scala type system, and advanced architectural patterns (e.g., Tagless Final, type classes, effect systems).
• Ability to design and evolve complex distributed systems while promoting engineering best practices across the team
• Hands-on experience with AWS services and cloud-native delivery practices.
• Good understanding of CI/CD, Git, branching strategies, pull request flows, automated testing, and release practices.
• Ability to work effectively in distributed Agile teams, communicate clearly, and take ownership of complex technical problems.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Squeryl, Doobie, or similar Scala data access libraries.
• Familiarity with Grafana or Kibana dashboards, alerting, logging, and production observability practices.
• Experience with large distributed systems, horizontal scaling, resilient service design, or high-throughput Play / Pekko applications.
• Previous experience in Payroll, HR, HCM, ERP, compliance-heavy, or localisation-focused product domains.
• Russian, Ukrainian, or Polish language skills would be beneficial, but are not essential.

Ways of Working

• Pragmatic, delivery-focused, and able to balance new feature development with maintenance, bug fixing, and technical improvement work.
• Proactive in code reviews, design discussions, troubleshooting, and knowledge sharing across the engineering team.
• Strong problem-solving mindset, attention to detail, and willingness to work with an established codebase while helping modernise it over time.

Want to know more about our Product?: https://hcm.sage.com/

Benefits? We have plenty...

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCMtTYUUiuU

• Generous bonuses and pension scheme: Up to 8% matched pension contribution plus 2% top-up by Sage.
• 25 days of paid annual leave with the option to buy up to another 5 days.
• 8 bank holiday days.
• Paid 5 days yearly to volunteer through our Sage Foundation.
• 50% income protection.
• Holiday buy + sell.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Work away scheme for up to 10 weeks a year.
• Ongoing training and professional development.
• Hybrid working.
• Healthy Mind app membership
• Access to various helpful memberships for finances, health and wellbeing.