Senior Ruby on Rails Developer

Explore Group; Brighton; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Four-day week

Remote-friendly with in-person day

Brighton in-office day

Job summary

Explore Group is recruiting on behalf of a small, profitable Brighton-based B2B SaaS product company. They seek a senior Ruby on Rails Engineer to partner with the CTO, owning architectural decisions and delivery for a Rails monolith with a Hotwire frontend, API-heavy work, and a focus on performance.

You will mentor the wider team, shape technical direction, and drive pragmatic, well-tested code. The role offers a four-day week, remote-friendly setup with one in-person day in Brighton, and a

Qualifications

• Strong, demonstrable Ruby on Rails experience at senior level.
• Ability to own technical decisions with minimal oversight as a true 'number two'.
• Experience with monolith architecture and API-heavy systems.
• Interest in Hotwire/server-rendered approaches over heavy JS frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Act as senior technical lead alongside the founder, owning architecture and delivery.
• Work across the Rails monolith with a Hotwire frontend, delivering pragmatic, well-tested code.
• Engage in network/API-heavy engineering work.
• Shape technical direction for a small, high-trust team and mentor a mid-level hire.
• Collaborate closely with the CTO to unblock the team and drive scaling decisions.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

Senior engineering

Technical leadership

Tools

Hotwire

Monolith architecture

Job description

Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer | Brighton | 4-Day Week/1 Day in Office

We're recruiting on behalf of a small, profitable B2B SaaS product company based in Brighton. They've deliberately stayed lean rather than scaling headcount, a tight, senior team building a product used by clients who rely on it daily. The stack is a single Ruby on Rails monolith (recently reconsolidated from a more fragmented setup) with a Hotwire-style frontend, doing network and API heavy work. This isn't a React/JS-heavy shop, it's Rails-first, and performance is not a bottleneck for what they do.

They're looking for a senior engineer to act as a genuine "number two" to the CTO someone who can unblock the team, own technical decisions day-to-day, and help shape how the product scales without losing its focus.

What you'll be doing

• Acting as senior technical lead alongside the founder, taking real ownership of architecture and delivery
• Working across a Rails monolith with a Hotwire frontend, pragmatic, well-tested code over framework sprawl
• Doing network/API-heavy engineering work
• Helping shape technical direction for a small, high-trust team rather than managing a large one
• Mentoring and supporting the wider team, including an incoming mid-level hire

What they're looking for

• Strong, demonstrable Ruby on Rails experience at senior level
• Comfortable owning technical decisions with minimal oversight, a proactive "number two," not just a senior IC
• Experience with monolith architecture, API-first/network-heavy systems
• Genuine interest in Hotwire/server-rendered approaches over heavy JS frameworks
• Able to commute to Brighton one day a week for in-person collaboration
• UK right to work

The offer

• Permanent role
• Four-day working week
• Remote-friendly, with one in-person day in Brighton
• Salary assessed against demonstrable value, strong applications with justified expectations won't be capped by a rigid band
• A genuinely small, senior team, not a scale-up sausage factory