Senior Software Engineer

Alliants; Southampton; Hybrid; GBP 74,000 - 80,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid office day

Remote-friendly

AI-native engineering

High autonomy

Inclusive team culture

Great Oak welcome

Job summary

Alliants, established in 2009, is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to own architecture and the AI-powered delivery pipeline. The role sits in the Engineering — Product team, with autonomy to shape how the platform is built, tested and released.

The successful candidate will lead end-to-end design, work in a small team, and influence how customers receive features through a fast, trunk-based delivery loop.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building and operating production software, with senior level experience.
• Strong system design capability with trade-off reasoning.
• Platform/DevOps mindset, CI/CD and delivery pipelines experience.
• Hands-on experience directing AI coding agents in production contexts.
• Strong TypeScript skills and API/data experience (GraphQL, REST).

Responsibilities

• Own large, ambiguous problems from framing through production deployment.
• Set architectural direction for the platform and defend trade-offs.
• Build the delivery pipeline that turns intent into shippable code.
• Write and maintain evals, tests and guardrails for reliable output.
• Review generated code and ensure it can be confidently debugged.
• Release to production on trunk daily and diagnose issues quickly.
• Remove friction from the delivery loop and improve tooling.
• Translate technical decisions for product and leadership.

Skills

5+ years experience

System design

CI/CD

AI coding agents

TypeScript

GraphQL

Tools

REST

Postgres

AWS

Monorepo

Job description

Job Description

We're rebuilding our platform around an AI-orchestrated delivery pipeline — and we're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to own how that work gets designed, generated, gated and released.

The role at a glance

• Title: Senior Software Engineer
• Location: Southampton, UK — hybrid, with one anchor day per week in the office (currently Thursday) Compensation: £74,000 – £80,000 per year
• Contract: Full-time, permanent
• Team: Engineering — Product. Five engineers including this role, reporting to the Engineering Lead

This is a senior engineering role on our Engineering — Product team, and it's built around two things.

The first: Ownership. You'll take large, ambiguous problems end-to-end — framing the problem, designing the solution, delivering it and operating it in production. Not picking up specced tickets, and not handing off at merge. You bring the problem and your proposed solution, and you follow it all the way through.

The second: How the work actually gets done. We're rebuilding our platform around an AI-orchestrated delivery pipeline: it's TypeScript throughout, and are heavily utilizing agents for our code production. That changes what a senior engineer's day looks like. The value isn't in producing code faster — it's in designing the system the code has to fit, building the guardrails, tests and evals that keep generated work inside those lines, and reviewing output with enough judgement that nothing reaches production you couldn't explain line by line.

If you want to be the person deciding how a whole team ships software, this is that role.

Role Focus & Operating Context

You’ll own system design across the platform, setting the architectural direction alongside product and deciding how product changes get delivered through it. The decisions you make in your first few months will shape the platform for years.

The delivery loop is fast and we intend to keep it that way: trunk-based development, daily releases, quick CI, short feedback cycles. Part of the job is spotting friction in that loop and fixing it rather than reporting it.

You’ll sit in a tightly-knit team of five engineers, pair with a product manager in a squad on each initiative, and operate with real autonomy.

What You’ll Work On And Own

• The architecture — how the platform is structured, and the trade-offs behind every call
• The pipeline — the skills, agents, guardrails, tests and evals that decide what good output looks like
• What ships — full accountability for generated code in production, including being able to explain any of it
• The release loop — how quickly an idea gets from a conversation to a customer
• Whole initiatives — one squad, one product manager, one problem, yours from framing through to operating it
• The team's leverage — the patterns, context and tooling that make the other four engineers faster

Job Requirements

What you'll bring

• 5+ years building and operating production software, now working at a senior level, with a track record of taking large, ambiguous projects from start to finish
• Strong system design capability — able to own architectural decisions, reason about trade-offs across performance, cost and complexity, and defend them
• A platform or DevOps-minded approach — comfortable owning CI/CD, delivery pipelines, environments and the tooling that surrounds how software gets shipped
• Hands‑on experience directing AI coding agents on real production work, with the judgement to verify and fully understand generated output
• Strong TypeScript, with solid API and data experience (GraphQL and REST, Postgres, AWS), and comfort in a monorepo built around a core service and satellite services
• A questioning approach to tooling — you evaluate what is working, measure it, and are not wedded to any single vendor or assistant

To Thrive In This Role, You’ll Be Someone Who

• Brings the problem and the proposed solution, and follows through to production
• Never accepts the status quo — asks whether the current process, tool or architecture is working, and improves it rather than tolerating it
• Makes progress on loosely‑defined problems, pulling in the right people and stakeholders to get things across the line
• Explains technical complexity in plain language to product and non-technical stakeholders, and thrives in a small, closely-connected team
• Is genuinely curious about AI-native engineering — energised by an unproven, fast-moving way of working rather than unsettled by it

Job Responsibilities

• Own large, ambiguous problems from first framing through to running in production. You will define the problem alongside your product manager, agree the shape of the work, and see it through without waiting for direction.
• Set the architectural direction for the platform and hold the line on it. You will write designs up front, take them to the team for review, record the trade-offs behind each decision, and revisit them when production tells you something different.
• Build the delivery pipeline that turns intent into shippable code. This involves the skills, context, constraints and instructions that get reliable output from agents the first time rather than the fifth.
• Write and maintain the evals, tests and guardrails that catch problems before human review does, tightening them each time something slips through.
• Review generated code with the same rigour you would apply to your own. Nothing reaches production that you could not confidently debug and explain.
• Release to production on trunk daily and watch what happens next. You will diagnose and restore quickly when something breaks, then fix the underlying cause rather than the symptom.
• Remove friction from the delivery loop wherever you find it, whether that is slow CI, flaky tests, missing context, or manual steps nobody has questioned.
• Raise the bar around you by establishing the patterns, context and tooling that make the other four engineers faster.
• Translate technical decisions into plain language for product and senior leadership, bringing the problem and your proposed solution rather than a status update.

Job Benefits

Who is Alliants and what do we do?

Alliants, established in 2009, is dedicated to producing customer engagement technologies and services that pave the way for a more human, sustainable, and promising future for hospitality.

At Alliants, we are all in for our people and our industry.

What’s in it for you?

• Hybrid flexibility: one anchor day a week together in the Southampton office (currently Thursday), with the rest of the week worked flexibly and support for flexible working
• Nomad-friendly working: Flexibility to work remotely from different locations
• AI-native engineering, for real: a genuine mandate to shape how a whole team ships software, not a pilot bolted onto business as usual
• High autonomy & trust: A role designed for independent operators, with clear ownership, minimal micromanagement, and direct impact on day-to-day delivery.
• Inclusive team culture: We strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work
• A warm welcome: To celebrate you joining Alliants, we’ll plant a Great Oak tree in your honour.

Please note: this role is hybrid and requires you to be within commuting distance of our Southampton office.

Alliants celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Salary

74000 - 80000 GBP (yearly)