Junior Developer

Isms; Brighton; Hybrid; GBP 26,000 - 38,000; Full time

Job summary

Isms is seeking a Junior Developer to join a small, capable engineering team in the UK. You will work with our CTO, Tech Lead and Product Team to deliver roadmap work on a mature Rails platform. You’ll gain real code review, pairing, and feedback as you grow into a mid-level engineer.

You’ll contribute to building features in Ruby on Rails, fix bugs, write tests, and learn the codebase through collaboration and technical planning sessions. We support AI-assisted coding with careful review.

Qualifications

• 1–2 years of professional experience, or equivalent via degree, bootcamp or projects
• Hands-on experience with Ruby, ideally Rails
• Good grasp of object-oriented programming fundamentals
• Basic SQL and relational database understanding
• Regular use of AI tools for coding with critical review
• Willingness to take feedback and learn quickly
• Clear, honest communication about work style

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain well-scoped features in Ruby on Rails
• Fix bugs and improve both legacy and modern parts of the app
• Write and maintain tests, including Cypress end-to-end tests
• Learn codebase through pairing, code review and planning sessions
• Use AI tools daily for coding, testing, and documentation with review
• Share learnings with the team and ask questions

Skills

Ruby

Ruby on Rails

OOP fundamentals

SQL

AI tools for coding

Communication

Feedback receptiveness

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related

Bootcamp / alternative path acceptable

Tools

Stimulus

Turbo/Hotwire

RSpec

Cypress

Job description

This role suits someone early in their career who has built real things in Ruby, wants to learn how a long-running production system works, and is keen to grow into a mid-level engineer.

Help us scale smarter, faster, and with purpose

Since 2005, we’ve helped organisations achieve their goals through simple, sustainable, and scalable information security. What started as a solution to help UK police forces share sensitive data securely has grown into a global SaaS platform, IO – trusted by thousands of businesses worldwide.

We’re growing fast. Backed by private equity investment and with customers across the UK, Europe, the US, and APAC, we’re expanding our team and doubling down on our mission: to set the standard for information security management and deliver compliance confidence through our exceptional people, process, and platform.

That’s where you come in.

About the role

We’re hiring a Junior Developer to join our small, capable engineering team.

You’ll work alongside our CTO, Tech Lead, senior engineers and Product Team to deliver roadmap work on a mature Ruby on Rails platform. You’ll get real code review, regular pairing and clear feedback, and you’ll learn how to use AI tools well rather than just quickly.

This role suits someone early in their career who has built real things in Ruby, wants to learn how a long-running production system works, and is keen to grow into a mid-level engineer.

What you’ll be doing

• Build and maintain well-scoped product features in Ruby on Rails
• Fix bugs and make small improvements across legacy and modern parts of the application
• Write and maintain tests, including Cypress end-to-end tests
• Learn the codebase through pairing, code review and technical planning sessions
• Use AI tools day to day for coding, testing and documentation, with careful review of the output
• Ask questions, raise ideas and share what you learn with the team

Our stack

Our core application is a long-running Rails monolith with more than 15 years of history. Some older patterns still exist, but new development is moving in a clear, modern direction.

• Rails 8.1
• Ruby 4.x
• MySQL 8.x
• GitHub Actions
• Cypress end-to-end testing
• Turbo
• Literal::Types
• Service objects, moving towards dry-rb libraries
• Action Policy
• Rails Event Store
• Delayed Job
• New Relic
• Terraform and Kubernetes on AWS

AI-augmented engineering, without the slop

We’re serious about using AI to improve speed, quality and leverage across engineering. It isn’t a nice-to-have for us; it’s how we work now. We generate with AI, but everything is reviewed and everything carries original thought.

We’d like you to already use AI tools in your own work, be curious about getting better at it, and understand that you are responsible for every line you commit.

What you bring

Must-haves

• Around 1–2 years of professional experience, or equivalent through a degree, bootcamp or substantial personal projects
• Hands-on experience with Ruby, ideally Ruby on Rails
• A good grasp of object-oriented programming fundamentals
• Basic SQL and an understanding of how relational databases work
• Regular use of AI tools for coding, with the habit of checking and understanding what they produce
• A willingness to take feedback and learn quickly
• Clear, honest communication: you tell us how you work best and adapt to how others like to work

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with Stimulus, Turbo or Hotwire
• Experience writing automated tests (RSpec, Minitest or Cypress)
• Interest in security and compliance
• Personal projects that show thoughtful use of AI

Why you’ll love it here

Our exec team is hands-on in the code and brings real industry expertise. They care about growth, and about how we achieve it. We win and lose together.

We’re a small engineering organisation, so you’ll see your work in production quickly and learn from experienced engineers every day. We value people who contribute beyond the ticket in front of them, collaborate well and help improve how the team works.