Junior Software Engineer

SR2 | Socially Responsible Recruitment | Certified B Corporation™; Bath; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Founding-team equity

Influence over product decisions

Mission-driven team

Job summary

SR2 | Socially Responsible Recruitment is helping a mission-driven startup in the South West hire a junior Founding Engineer to join day one, reporting to the Co-founder/CTO and Head of Engineering.

This product-facing role focuses on building user-friendly software for responsible finance and nature restoration, with real ownership from concept to delivery.

You'll collaborate with a small founding team, enjoy equity, and shape frontend decisions while growing quickly in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• 1+ years' experience in a relevant engineering, data, design or product discipline.
• Some early experience contributing to a feature or product, even in a supporting role, that you can talk through.
• A genuine team player who takes ownership and accountability for their own work.
• A real interest in AI tooling - you see AI as an opportunity, not a threat, and want to learn where it can add value.
• Genuine curiosity about the latest tech trends and what's new.
• Happy to chip in and pick up the slack - you find variation exciting, and no two days look the same.
• Genuinely bought into what they're doing in nature - this has to matter to you, not just be a nice-to-have.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, changing environment.
• Familiarity with, or a genuine willingness to learn, Agile ways of working and tools.
• A self-starter mindset, even if you're still early in your career.

Responsibilities

• Work on features and product from concept through to delivery, building toward real end-to-end ownership as you grow.
• Work directly with real-world user feedback - collecting it, interpreting it, and acting on it.
• Sit in on architecture and design decisions, and start contributing your own ideas as you build context.
• Spot areas ripe for efficiency or automation, and go and fix them without waiting to be asked.
• Get stuck into whatever the business needs that week - that's what founding engineer means there.

Skills

Frontend / full stack

UI/UX

Data

Design

Product

Apps

Job description

We're really excited to kick start an exclusive search for a couple of Founding Engineers for a brilliant start-up client (and friends) of ours in the South West! They're rewriting how businesses fund environmental restoration, building the plumbing that turns a slice of ordinary commercial activity into traceable, verified funding for nature, automatically, at scale.

Think of it as a new financial layer sitting quietly underneath everyday business payments - one that diverts a portion of value toward verified environmental restoration, with proof of impact built in rather than bolted on afterwards.

They are already live in UK retail, working with major partners, and backed by leading voices in nature finance. They're small, ambitious, and solving a genuinely hard problem: how do you move real capital into real ecosystems, transaction by transaction, and prove every penny landed where it was meant to.

The role

We're looking for a junior Founding Engineer (1+ years) to join a small founding team, working directly with the Co-founder/CTO and Head of Engineering. This is a product-facing role, not an infrastructure or backend one - they already have those areas covered. What they need is someone who genuinely cares about delivering products for people: how something looks, how it feels, and whether it actually solves the problem it was built for. You'll be working closely with the founding team from day one, with real support to grow your ownership fast.

You could come from any of these backgrounds - they care far more about the underlying skill than the job title on your last CV:

• Front end / full stack
• UI/UX
• Data
• Design
• Product
• Apps

Their stack today

• Application layer: three "headful" Ruby on Rails applications, actively being migrated to headless React/TypeScript frontends
• API: Ruby - staying Ruby, as the backbone the new frontends talk to
• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions

A note for frontend-focused candidates: you'll have real freedom to shape frontend technology choices, not just implementation. If key architectural decisions haven't been finalised by the time you join, you'll have a genuine say in them - and even where they have, you're free to challenge, evolve, or rebuild on what's there if there's a better way

What you'll do

• Work on features and product from concept through to delivery, building toward real end-to-end ownership as you grow
• Work directly with real-world user feedback - collecting it, interpreting it, and acting on it
• Sit in on architecture and design decisions, and start contributing your own ideas as you build context
• Spot areas ripe for efficiency or automation, and go and fix them without waiting to be asked
• Get stuck into whatever the business needs that week - that's what founding engineer means there

What they're looking for

• 1+ years' experience in a relevant engineering, data, design or product discipline
• Some early experience contributing to a feature or product, even in a supporting role, that you can talk through
• A genuine team player who takes ownership and accountability for their own work
• A real interest in AI tooling - you see AI as an opportunity, not a threat, and want to learn where it can add value
• Genuine curiosity about the latest tech trends and what's new
• Happy to chip in and pick up the slack - you find variation exciting, and no two days look the same
• Genuinely bought into what they're doing in nature - this has to matter to you, not just be a nice-to-have
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, changing environment
• Familiarity with, or a genuine willingness to learn, Agile ways of working and tools
• A self-starter mindset, even if you're still early in your career

What you'll get

Genuine founding-team equity and real influence over the product and how it's built

A seat close to the company's next chapter - more on that at interview

The chance to build something that routes real money into real nature restoration, with the proof to back it up

A small, sharp, mission-driven team who'll push you to do the best work of your career