Senior Software Engineer II

Thought Machine; Greater London; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Pension plan

Life insurance

Cycle-to-work scheme

Flexible working hours

Job summary

Thought Machine is seeking a Senior Software Engineer II in Greater London to own complex, end-to-end technical challenges and drive systemic engineering direction across platforms.

You’ll lead technical interviews, influence architecture, and collaborate with senior leadership to align with company goals. Strong Go/Python skills and experience with large-scale systems are essential.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in modern backend languages (Go/Python) and large-scale cloud-native systems.
• Proven ability to lead and mentor, drive delivery of complex solutions.
• Strong focus on performance, reliability, and scalable architecture.

Responsibilities

• Design & Build: tackle highly complex problems with deep codebase knowledge.
• Architecture & Standards: drive security, performance, and maintainability standards.
• Technical Direction: introduce tools and processes shaping the tech roadmap.
• Code Quality & Peer Review: provide guidance ensuring long-term impact.
• Operational Excellence: investigate cross-service production issues.

Skills

Go

Python

System design

Tools

AI-tools

Job description

As a Senior Software Engineer II, you operate with a wide sphere of influence. You will own complex, highly ambiguous technical challenges end-to-end, handling unexpected hurdles independently and gracefully.

Your role goes beyond individual team delivery; you will drive systemic, organizational change and shape the long-term technical direction of our platforms. You will actively drive our engineering and company principles by aligning with our broader codebase, architecture, objectives, and goals, while acting as a crucial link between senior leadership, external stakeholders, and engineering teams.

What You’ll Do

Technical Leadership

• Design & Build: Create solutions to highly complex problems, utilising a deep understanding of the codebase and architecture, and lead the direction for future technical change.
• Architecture & Standards: Utilise expertise to enable solutions to meet security, performance, cost, reliability, maintainability, and scalability requirements in a repeatable way and beyond existing capabilities, shaping the overall technical direction. Take part in defining standards and engineering practices for the entire company. Drive adoption of latest technologies, such as AI-tools, to scale developer velocity and code quality, keeping Thought Machine always ahead of the curve.
• Technical Direction: Keep a pulse on industry-leading software trends and best practices, introducing new tools and processes that shape Thought Machine’s technical roadmap.
• Code Quality & Peer Review: Provide technical leadership and guidance to support others, ensuring their work items consider broader impact, long-term outcomes, and strategic direction end-to-end.
• Operational Excellence: Investigate complex issues spanning across services in non-local or production environments (including across environments, clusters, and products), and possess a deep understanding to drive improvements to operational and production support processes.
• Hiring: Lead technical interviews to actively evaluate the capability of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and leadership roles.

Product & Delivery

• End-to-End Ownership: Own the solution to work items of undefined scope and high complexity end-to-end, handling unexpected complexity gracefully and independently. Drive delivery requiring effective and timely stakeholder management across larger milestones, which can potentially span multiple units or departments.
• Product Vision: Utilise a deep understanding of the product to envision and contribute to future solutions, plans, and approaches. Drive the direction and actively contribute to the product strategy, vision, and long-term roadmap.

Collaboration & Mentorship

• Strategic Communication: Communicate seamlessly with stakeholders at all levels, managing leadership expectations while preserving the agility and focus of engineering teams. Build consensus, and enable solutions to complex, changing requirements.
• Team Growth: Inspire and empower others by example and through your guidance, knowledge sharing, and idea creation. Understand the capabilities and expertise of others to enable effective delegation and personal growth. Empower, inspire, and delegate effectively to senior engineers, fostering an environment of technical excellence and continuous growth.

What We’re Looking For

• Technical Expertise and Leadership: Deep expertise in modern backend languages (ideally Go/Python) and large-scale, cloud-native systems. A proven technical leader who champions industry best practices, mentors peers, and drives the delivery of solutions to highly complex problems.
• Problem Solving: A proven ability to solve highly complex problems of undefined scope, utilising your expertise for decision-making that actively influences the strategic direction of the department.
• Production Operations: Extensive experience investigating complex issues across multiple environments, clusters, and products, with a demonstrated ability to drive systemic improvements to operational and production support processes.
• Egoless Collaboration: A visionary mindset that does not accept the status quo. You are receptive to new ideas, able to see how different approaches can be combined advantageously, and focused on finding solutions that improve company and client outcomes.
• Communication: Exceptional communication skills with the capability to provide leadership across a variety of stakeholders, drive organisational change, and set the direction for how engineers operate with technical excellence.

Benefits

• Highly competitive salary
• Pension plan (match up to 5%)
• Life insurance – three times annual salary
• Competitive maternity (six months fully paid) and paternity leave (four weeks fully paid)
• Shared parental leave (matched to our maternity leave for the same point in time)
• 25 days holiday and bank holidays
• Flexible working hours
• Cycle-to-work scheme
• Electric car scheme
• Season ticket loan
• Access to outstanding learning materials and courses
• Sports and hobby clubs, subsidised by Thought Machine
• All the latest tech you need
• Start the day properly with fresh fruit and cereals
• Huge range of healthy (and not-so-healthy) snacks, smoothies and drinks
• A talented and experienced team as your colleagues
• An environment where we encourage learning and progress
• Two charity days a year
• Weekly food pop-up

We actively hire candidates who demonstrate technical excellence in their field and welcome people of all ages and backgrounds, providing everyone with equal access to professional development. You are encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't accurately match the job description. We also encourage applications from those with different abilities, including candidates with ADHD, autism, dyslexia or dyspraxia.