Senior Software Engineer

Unique X Ltd; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Certification support

Annual leave 20–25 days

Birthday off

Team events

Hybrid work with flexible hours

Location flexibility

Referral program

Job summary

Unique X Ltd. seeks a Senior Engineer to own features from concept to production. You will guide AI coding agents, specify changes, and judge results, while collaborating with Product Owner and clients to ensure real problems are solved.

We build in a Java/Serverless AWS stack with TypeScript, React, Node services, and a focus on testing, API design, and scalable architecture. Hybrid work and learning opportunities are offered.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building production software and owning technical decisions.
• Strong TypeScript with modern React and Node-based services.
• Solid Java (17 or 21) and Spring Boot to read and extend a large codebase.
• Ability to guide AI coding tools and verify outputs in a live project.
• API-first design and treating specifications as truth.
• Writing precise specs and acceptance criteria for agents and reviewers.
• Testing as a first-class habit ensuring quality and behavior.
• Experience with AWS serverless: Lambda, API Gateway, SQS/SNS, RDS, IaC.
• SQL and relational data modelling for unfamiliar schemas.

Responsibilities

• Own features end-to-end from product conversation to production behavior.
• Write specification and acceptance criteria for agents and reviewers.
• Direct implementation and review code, improving agent context and rules.
• Ensure tests prove behavior, not just coverage numbers.
• Lead design in your area and mentor junior developers.

Skills

5+ years experience

TypeScript

React

Node

Java

Spring Boot

AWS serverless

Terraform

Docker

GitHub Actions

Vaadin

SQL

API design

Testing

English fluency

Tools

Terraform

Docker

GitHub Actions

Vaadin

Job description

Mission: DEVELOPING PIONEERS IN THE DIGITAL CINEMA SPACE

to creatively and collaboratively transform the cinema industry.

About the Company:

Unique X delivers innovative, autonomous software solutions and content services to cinemas worldwide as we draw all elements of cinema operations and content services together into a single, automated workflow.

We have a truly global reach; our products are used in over 90 different countries around the world making us the leading digital cinema solution provider and our customers include the major Hollywood and independent film studios and the largest cinema operators.

If you’ve ever been to the cinema, chances are Unique X helped put that content and the movie on the screen.

Team and Job Purpose:

We feel, act and behave as one big team, working inclusively and collaboratively to develop innovative products by encouraging employees to share their ideas. We value each person’s talent and the contributions they bring to the organisation, giving them the motivation and tools to successfully achieve their goals.

We see a Senior Engineer as the owner of a feature from the first conversation with the Product Owner to its behaviour in production, not as someone who turns tickets into code. AI agents now write most of the code under your direction. Your value is in understanding the problem, specifying the change and judging the result.

The Product

You will join the Advertising Accord (AA) team. AA is the platform cinema advertising sales houses use to sell, schedule, play out and report on the ads shown before the film, both directly sold and programmatic, across thousands of screens.

The platform is written in Java with a serverless-first mindset and deployed on AWS. We are building the next generation of the product to support agentic workflows—both in-product and for software development—and you will work on both the current and next generation of the product.

How We Build Software

We are an AI-first team. Developers direct AI coding agents to handle most implementation and testing, and spend their time on the problem, the specification, and the review. The constraint is no longer how fast you can type Java; it is how well you can specify, verify, and accept a change.

Trust comes from the pipeline, not the prompt. Every change, human or AI, passes the same automated quality, security, test and architecture gates, plus an independent review.

Teams are small and agile; they collaborate on all aspects of a product. You will participate in designing and verifying solutions.

Duties and Responsibilities

Do not expect to be a screw in a big machine. You own features end to end:

• Work with the Product Owner (and at times clients) to understand the real problem, and push back when the request does not match the need.
• Write the specification and acceptance criteria the agent and reviewer work from.
• Direct the implementation, review the code as you would a colleague's, and improve the agent context and rules as you go.
• Make sure the tests prove the behaviour, not just the coverage number.
• Lead design in your area and mentor developers earlier in this shift.

Who we think will be a great fit

A strong engineer already working this way or close to it. Can you explain a system to a product owner or an agent in plain language, then guide implementation with human judgments on code quality, architecture, user interface, and similar concerns.

• 5+ years building production software, including a role where you owned technical decisions (Senior Developer, Tech Lead or similar).
• Strong TypeScript — strict typing, modern React, and Node-based services. Most new feature work is built here.
• Solid Java (17 or 21) and Spring Boot — enough to read, extend and safely change a large established codebase.
• Day-to-day direction of agentic AI coding tools in a real codebase rather than a scratch project, and the ability to explain how you verify what they produce.
• API and contract-first design: you can design a clean HTTP API and treat the specification as the source of truth rather than documentation written afterwards.
• Written specifications and acceptance criteria precise enough for an agent to implement from and a reviewer to judge against.
• Testing as a first-class habit — you write the tests that define the behaviour, and can tell a suite that proves something from one that only moves the coverage number.
• AWS serverless: Lambda, API Gateway, SQS/SNS, RDS, and infrastructure as code.
• SQL and relational data modelling — comfortable reading an unfamiliar schema and reasoning about the data before changing anything.
• Senior-level code review, including reviewing and adjudicating automated review findings.
• Fluent in English to communicate with team members.

We are not looking for an exact match between our tech stack and your skillset - you’ll have a chance to learn new tech.

• Building and maintaining agent context: project rules, subagents, prompts, skills or internal tooling.
• Terraform, Docker and GitHub Actions.
• Vaadin, or maintaining another server-side UI framework.
• Working across a multi-repository estate with many client-specific deployments and environments.
• Advertising technology, programmatic (OpenRTB) or digital cinema.
• Domains where correctness is auditable and being wrong is expensive — financial reporting, reconciliation, billing.
• Love of movies.

We offer exciting benefits such as:

• Looking to take a certification course or embark on a learning activity? We will support you where we can!
• 20 days annual leave increasing to 25 based on length of service.
• A day off to celebrate your birthday!
• Meet and have fun with your colleagues at team events.
• Hybrid working with flexible hours to support your working preferences.
• Is your hometown too small for you? You have the opportunity to work from another location.
• Want to work with your friends or the techie people you know? We have a referral program to help you with that.

As a company, we are required to complete criminal record checks on our employees e.g. DBS (Disclosure Barring Service or relevant check-in our other locations e.g. Lithuania/USA)